Man in the Place of the Gods

What Cities Mean

WHO SAYS SECULAR PEOPLE CANT BE SPIRITUAL? What do cities mean to you? Excitement? Dreams and goals? Glamor? Escape? Danger? Romance? Artistically planned parks, zoos and museums? Shopping? Ohmygod skyscrapers and bridges? Gershwins Rhapsody in Blue? From Aristotle to Ayn Rand, writers have analyzed and gloried in cities as the greatest expression of Man the rational builder and inventor. Architecture, especially, makes the city the temple of Rational Man. Frederick Cookinham is a New York City tour guide, specializing in New Yorks colonial and Revolutionary history and in AYN RANDS NEW YORK. In THE AGE OF RAND Cookinham taught you to see the landscape through history glasses. Now learn to see cities through temple glasses. See the spiritual in the secular! Be uplifted by the sight of Mans achievements. Make the city your temple to Mans mind, and dont be afraid to get all Ayn Rand about it. Appreciate better the deeper meanings behind the concrete (and steel!) facts of where you live. Analysis and insight on Ayn Rands life and work, embedded in a guide to New Yorks architecture and public art, wrapped in a paean to cities: how they work and what they mean to us. Victor Niederhoffer, NYC Junto