This book is a history of the initiative, its projects and actors, notably the architect and planner Ernst May, and its achievements, set within the turbulent context of the Weimar decade. It chronicles its many accomplishments: the construction of housing settlements, innovations in construction and materials, the parks and garden colonies program, innovations in school, medical facility and church design, reforms in woman's sphere, and a crafting of New Life culture. It examines the New Frankfurt am Main in light of the social and political debates that shaped it and the works it produced, and describes the relationship of work and theory to contemporary reform movements. Finally, the narrative underscores the gulf between the idyll of modernity and the political and social realities of life in a Germany on the brink of collapse.

Susan Henderson is a professor at Syracuse University, where she teaches architectural history in the School of Architecture and is on the faculty of the Renée Crown University Honors Program. She specializes in the fields of Islamic and early modern European architectural history. She holds a BA from the University of Washington, a Master of Architecture from MIT, and a PhD in architectural history from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University.