内容简介：
Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture.
"Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.
目录：
Contents ......Page 8
Introduction ......Page 10
Prehistory ......Page 14
Coney Island:The Technology of the Fantastic ......Page 30
The Double Life of Utopia:The Skyscraper ......Page 82
The Frontier in the Sky ......Page 83
The Skyscraper Theorists ......Page 111
The Lives of a Block:The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the Empire State Building ......Page 133
Definitive Instability:The Downtown Athletic Club ......Page 153
How Perfect Perfection Can Be:The Creation of Rockefeller Center ......Page 162
The Talents of Raymond Hood ......Page 163
All the Rockefeller Centers ......Page 179
Radio City Music Hall:The Fun Never Sets ......Page 209
Kremlin on Fifth Avenue ......Page 221
2 Postscripts ......Page 231
Europeans :Biuer!Dali and Le Corbusier Conquer New York ......Page 236
Postmortem ......Page 284
Appendix: A Fictional Conclusion ......Page 293
Notes ......Page 312
Acknowledgments ......Page 316