The Arcades Project Book

Two members of my family are currently obsessed with this book, so I think I'd better at least flip through it before I try to have dinner with both of them again.

Great story behind it, according to my dad: George Bataille had to stash this one in the medieval section of the Bibliothèque Nationale where he worked, when Benjamin fled the Nazis. Then, many many years later, way after that whole Nazi thing had blown over, a bunch of people were sitting around one day scratching their heads wondering what had ever happened to that crazy thing Benjamin had been working on back when the shit hit the fan, and Bataille said, "I have it!" And then the Germans spent about twenty years editing the hell out of it, as they are wont to do, and it wasn't translated into English until like the eighties or something, but now is readily available at every respectable bookseller in America.... Anyway, it looks difficult and it's way too long for me to take on right now, but I'm definitely planning to take a look at this thing before I have to share another meal with these lunatics.