This book analyses multiple facets of Kracauer’s work, comprehending the essayistic, narrative, philosophical, theoretical and critical writings, and putting special emphasis on some aspects: the phenomenology of metropolis, the theory of historiographic method, the reflections on the crisis of the subject and the emergence of a new subjectivity, the new forms of perception and aesthetic behaviour in late capitalism, the function of critic-intellectuals, the sociology of the middle classes, the theory of fascism, the aesthetical and sociological reflections on literary genres, the politicization of melancholy.