{"title":"VV Aa","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"the-passenger-berlin-paperback","title":"The Passenger: Berlin - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFully-illustrated, \u003cem\u003eThe Passenger\u003c\/em\u003e collects the best new writing, photography, art and reportage from around the world.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIN THIS VOLUME: \u003cem\u003eWhen the Circus Came to Town: The Resurrection of Potsdamer Platz\u003c\/em\u003e by Peter Schneider・\u003cem\u003eBerlin Suite\u003c\/em\u003e by Cees Nooteboom・\u003cem\u003eTempelhof: A Field of Dreams\u003c\/em\u003e by Vincenzo Latronico・plus: the controversial reconstruction of a Prussian castle, Berlin's most transgressive sex club and its disappearing traditional pubs, a green urban oasis, suburban neo-Nazis, North Vietnamese in the East, South Vietnamese in the West, techno everywhere and much more...\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Berlin is too big for Berlin\" is the curious title of a book by the flaneur Hanns Zischler, who joked about the low population density of a city so spread-out and polycentric--one of the reasons why it still inspires feelings of freedom and space. 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The era of Berlin as a site of urban archeology is over. Almost all the damaged buildings have been repaired, squatters have been removed, the shops selling East German furniture have closed down. Without its wounds, the landscape of the city is perhaps less striking but more solid, stronger. Even the city's inhabitants have lost some of their melancholia, their romantic and self-destructive streak: today you can even find people who come to Berlin to actually work, not just to \"create\" or idle their days away. Yet, Berlin remains a youthful city that doesn't cling to its \"poor but sexy\" past, whose only sacrosanct principles are an uncompromising multiculturalism and the belief that its future is yet to be written. 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The last frontier was open, the solar system seemed close at hand, Mars was the next step... Then, nothing. Between 1969 and 1972 twelve men (but no women) walked on the moon, but no one has since. The space race between the United States and the Soviet Union revealed itself for what it really was: a political and military competition between opposing nationalist narratives.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eSpace agencies, however, have not been idle since the 1970s--quite the opposite. While funding for space missions has been cut and their objectives have changed, humanity has continued to explore the solar system with probes and robots, less costly than human astronauts, and has observed celestial bodies more closely than ever before. Without politics, science has thrived. But the lack of government funding has also opened space exploration to the forces of capitalism. NASA and other space agencies rely more and more on private companies to build modules and rockets, and a generation of visionary and megalomaniac entrepreneurs has become determined to bring humans back to space, this time to stay. The race has started again, with different rules and different players in an increasingly multipolar world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut for those of us who remain on Earth, space also offers something else--a spiritual dimension, which science keeps alive by seeking answers to fundamental questions: what is the universe made of? How did the solar system form? What are the origins of life? 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