Kracauer's profound theoretical investigation revealed film as the form that best captured the new modes of experience that characterize modernity. Miriam Hansen's brilliant introduction chronicles the work's genesis and transformation through Kracauer's conversations with Adorno and Benjamin, his flight from the Nazis, and his uneasy assimilation into the Cold-War United States.—Tom Gunning, University of Chicago"Just as new translations of Kracauer's early works have begun to reveal aspects of his intellectual project previously unavailable to readers of English, this most welcome new edition of Kracauer's magnum opus of media aesthetics will cast a new interpretative light on his later work, thanks especially to Miriam Hansen's highly illuminating introductory essay."—Thomas Y. Levin, Princeton University