Alexander Motyl takes the reader on a journey from Vienna to New York through history with a literary vision and poetic rhythm. The speaker of these lively poems embraces cities and venues with trepidation and lustful abandon as if they were capricious lovers; contemplates composers, historical characters and saints with the ease of a long lost neighborhood friend. Poem to poem, wry humor and a sense of loss converge, taking to task that which stays and that which changes.