"Delirious New York proves above all, that Manhattan has been, from the beginning, devoted to the most rational, efficient and utilitarian pursuit of the irrational.an impressive documentation of original materials and unpublished projects provides the evidence for this architectural manifesto, which reads, in its insistent tracing of subconscious clues and themes, like a psychological thriller." From the front panel: "Manhattan is the arena of the terminal stage of Western Civilization: Through the simultaneous explosion of human destiny and an invasion of new technologies, Manhattan became, from 1850, a mythical laboratory for the invention and testing of a revolutionary lifestyle: the 'culture of congestion'. Delirious New York is a polemical investigation of that Manhattan; it documents the symbiotic relationship between its mutant metropolitan culture and the unique architecture to which it gave rise".