Walter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Notwithstanding the enormous impact made by his critical and philosophical writings, he was a thinker who shattered so many disciplinary and stylistic conventions that it is almost impossible to place him neatly in any particular category of writing or any specific and exclusive theoretical tradition. This collection, introduced by by Susan Sontag, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, and thus does full justice to the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.