An American social critic tells the story of urban life through people's bodily experience - how they moved, what they saw and heard, the smells that assailed their noses, where they ate, how they dressed, when they bathed and how they made love - in the spaces of the city, from ancient Athens to modern New York. The author sets out to explain why our civilization has had such trouble making a home for the human body, presenting a chronological survey which takes in Hadrian's Rome and medieval Paris, Renaissance Venice and E.M. Forster's London.