Eric Packer, a young billionaire asset manager, journeys across New York in his limousine despite a threat against his life, and the occurances of various events that are stalling traffic throughout the city.

From the bestselling author of White Noise comes a riveting exploration on wealth as a man's life gradually falls to pieces over the course of one day—now a major motion picture directed by David Cronenberg and starring Robert Pattinson. It is an April day in the year 2000 and an era is about to end. The booming times of market optimism—when the culture boiled with money and corporations seemed more vital and influential than governments— are poised to crash. Eric Packer, a billionaire asset manager at age twenty-eight, emerges from his penthouse triplex and settles into his lavishly customized white stretch limousine. Today he is a man with two missions: to pursue a cataclysmic bet against the yen and to get a haircut across town. Stalled in traffic by a presidential motorcade, a music idol’s funeral and a violent political demonstration, Eric receives a string of visitors—experts on security, technology, currency, finance and a few sexual partners—as the limo sputters toward an increasingly uncertain future. Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo’s thirteenth novel, is both intimate and global, a vivid and moving account of the spectacular downfall of one man, and of an era.

Eric Packer is a twenty-eight-year-old multi-billionaire asset manager. We join him on what will become a particularly eventful April day in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Manhattan. He's on a personal odyssey, to get a haircut. Sitting in his stretch limousine as it moves across town, he finds the city at a virtual standstill because the President is visiting, a rapper's funeral is proceeding, and a violent protest is being staged in Times Square by anti-globalist groups. Most worryingly, Eric's bodyguards are concerned that he may be a target . . . An electrifying study in affectlessness, infused with deep cynicism and measured detachment; a harsh indictment of the life-denying tendencies of capitalism; as brutal a dissection of the American dream as Wolfe's Bonfire or Ellis's Psycho, Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis is a caustic prophecy all too quickly realized.

In the seventeenth century, a vision arose which was to captivate the Western imagination for the next three hundred years: the vision of Cosmopolis, a society as rationally ordered as the Newtonian view of nature. While fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor, this vision perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Stephen Toulmin confronts that agenda—its illusions and its consequences for our present and future world. "By showing how different the last three centuries would have been if Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, Toulmin helps destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science or philosophy."—Richard M. Rorty, University of Virginia "[Toulmin] has now tackled perhaps his most ambitious theme of all. . . . His aim is nothing less than to lay before us an account of both the origins and the prospects of our distinctively modern world. By charting the evolution of modernity, he hopes to show us what intellectual posture we ought to adopt as we confront the coming millennium."—Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books

Originally published: New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers University, c1990.

In current debates, the term cosmopolitanismA” often remains quite vague and leads to sweeping generalizations. Unlike many recent publications, this book looks at the notion from a decidedly historical perspective, trying to give depth and texture to the concept.

The most important book on planning practice of the late 20th Century. It will set the terms of debate for years to come. Robert Beauregard The best contemporary text for teaching planning history and theory. It pushes theory and practice beyond its stubbornly modernist paradigms and into the new spaces opened by post-modern, post-colonial and feminist critiques. Edward Soja Sandercock draws on recent theoretical and political debates on gender, rate and sexuality as well as on grassroot struggles in the radically multiple cities of the late 20th Century to argue that planners have to find a way of building the new multicultural city, the Cosmopolis. Neil Smith A brilliant tour de force, an original critique no thinking planner should be without. Passionate yet coherently reasoned and lucidly written, the book advances a Utopian vision, deeply grounded in actual cases drawn from a wide variety of countries, to demonstrate how multicultural urban communities can achieve justice in a democratic manner. Janet Abu-Lughod From polis to metropolis, men and women have continued to struggle to perfect our cities. Urban history presents a picture of grand ideals and devastating failures. Towards Cosmopolis explores why we have failed, and how we could succeed, in building an urban Utopia - with a difference. Globalization, civil society, feminism and post-colonialism are the forces, ever shifting and changing, which are shaping our cities. We need a new vision to face such change. Sandercock pulls down the pillars of modernist city planning and raises in their place a new post-modern planning, a planning sensitive to community, environment and cultural diversity. Towards Cosmopolis is illustrated with case material from around the world - which present 'a thousand tiny empowerments' of current planning practice - and with a superb range of specially commissioned images. This bold critique cuts to the heart of current debates about the future of our cities. It deserves a place on every citizen's shelf.

Cosmopolis — Complete is a novel by French author Paul Bourget, known for his psychological and social exploration in his works. In Cosmopolis, Bourget delves into the complexities of human relationships and the cultural intricacies of an interconnected world. His keen observations and nuanced storytelling make this work an engaging and thought-provoking read.

This volume makes a challenging critique of the idea of Cosmopolis - that is, the idea of world or 'global' government. In recent years this idea has been put forward as a way of averting the threat of war and international disorder, and as a way of avoiding the destruction of the planet. Proponents of this idea call for a radical reform of the United Nations which aims to legitimize this institution as an international police force and as a provider of global justice. Zolo criticizes this new cosmopolitan philosophy and rejects the idea of trying to eliminate international conflict through the use of centralized and superior military force. He seeks instead to develop a conception of international relations which takes account of their pluralistic, dynamic and conflictual nature. This conception moves away from the logic of hierarchical centralization, which so dominates the UN Charter, and towards the logic of 'weak interventionism' and 'weak pacifism' which relies on self-organization, co-ordination and negotiation. Timely, provocative and iconoclastic, Cosmopolis is an important contribution to current debates in politics, international relations and social and political theory.