This text examines the popularity in Paris of phenomena such as boulevards, the mass press and wax museums during the second half of the 19th century. It argues that "spectacular realities" helped create modern mass society and that instead of leading to alienation they united crowds in pleasure.[...]

Powerful and often controversial, news pictures promise to make the world at once immediate and knowable. Yet while many great writers and thinkers have evaluated photographs of atrocity and crisis, few have sought to set these images in a broader context by defining the rich and diverse history of [...]