Renowned poet and conceptual artist Kenneth Goldsmith collects a massive assortment of quotations about New York City in the 20th century. This kaleidoscopic montage from hundreds of sources is a literary adoration of New York as the capital of the world, and was inspired by Walter Benjamin's unfinished masterpiece, the Arcades Project, a compendium of quotations about 19th century Paris. Goldsmith brings together an immense archive of quotations about modern New York from novels, histories, newspapers, memoirs, letters, advertisements, and more unlikely sources, all organized into lyrical and philosophical categories. The result is a magisterial and poetic history of New York in the 20th century, and an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind book of experimental literature.