1853年，法国国王路易·拿破仑指派塞纳河省长乔治-欧仁·奥斯曼开启了一项庞大而雄心勃勃的市政改造公共工程。这项改造计划——尽管其间夹杂着战争、革命、腐败和破产——不但让巴黎的面貌焕然一新，还为19世纪和20世纪初的城市规划树立了一个典范，并开创了现代巴黎经久不衰的城市布局。
林荫大道、公园、广场、火车站、百货商店，以及全新的公共卫生系统，缀成了它的生命。这场历时十五年的城市革新项目背后有哪些鲜为人知的故事？今天的城市建设者能从中吸取什么经验，让城市变得更宜居、更人性？本书作者鲁伯特·克里斯琴将带领我们回到一百五十多年前的巴黎，看它如何从一个污水横流、贫民窟遍地、疾病缠绕的中世纪破旧城市，一跃成为了举世闻名的“光之城”。

In WATCHING THE ENGLISH anthropologist Kate Fox takes a revealing look at the quirks, habits and foibles of the English people. She puts the English national character under her anthropological microscope, and finds a strange and fascinating culture, governed by complex sets of unspoken rules and byzantine codes of behaviour. The rules of weather-speak. The ironic-gnome rule. The reflex apology rule. The paranoid-pantomime rule. Class indicators and class anxiety tests. The money-talk taboo and many more ...Through a mixture of anthropological analysis and her own unorthodox experiments (using herself as a reluctant guinea-pig), Kate Fox discovers what these unwritten behaviour codes tell us about Englishness.