In an leading edge contribution to the tough of disciplinary obstacles, Edward J. Ahearn juxtaposes works of literature with the writings of social scientists to find how jointly they light up urban lifestyles in ways in which neither can accomplish individually. Ahearn's argument spans from the second one half the 19th century in Western Europe to the present-day usa and incorporates a wide variety of literary genres and sociological colleges. for instance, Charles Baudelaire's essays at the urban are considered along the paintings of Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel; Bertolt Brecht's Jungle of towns heightens the arguments of Louis Wirth and Robert Park; Richard Wright's local Son and Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March are re-visioned in tandem with works through William Julius Wilson and others; Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" poses a problem to James Q. Wilson's paperwork; Toni Morrison's ancient novel Jazz is buttressed via the profession of Robert Moses and the revisionist paintings of historians Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson; and Don DeLillos's Cosmopolis comes into superb concentration within the gentle of arguments on global cybercities by means of David Harvey, Saskia Sassen, and Manuel Cassels. Resisting the temptation to disregard contradictions for the sake of interpretation, Ahearn as an alternative deals the reader a view of the fashionable urban as complicated as his material. the following the methodologies and data generated via the social sciences are either complemented and subverted by means of the event of urban existence as portrayed in literature. With its assorted narrative strategies and transferring issues of view, which are as disorienting to the reader as a overseas urban is to an arriving immigrant, literature reinforces the significance of strategy and outlook within the social sciences. eventually, Ahearn indicates, neither literature nor the social sciences can catch the adventure of city misery.