I would hope that readers “browsing” would first look at the book’s cover. It is a dreamy image of water taken on the Hudson River by artist Ellen Kozak. I would want them to allow themselves to dream and wander and then to read the Prologue, which is called “Wandering Monks and Peripatetic Birds.” It begins,” Thinking in Place: Art Action and Cultural Production is the result of the past decade of wandering.”If people read that and then go on to read about the range of places I have visited—Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, India, Africa, Germany and sites such as the Wannsee House (where the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question” was determined), they would know a lot about me and how deeply place affects me, how everything begins in sense and then becomes response. Response then translates into ideas that then become philosophical constructs that then seek to be written. They then would know how much process matters to me; I think about writing as artists think about art making.The readers would come to understand that the book is also about them, about how they think, and they could then reflect upon their own method of thinking in place as I have reflected on mine.Because I was educated to be a literary critic and came up during the time of modernist and postmodern theory, I have had to find ways of writing that communicate how I think in ways that are translatable to others. I want the writing to be elegant, poetic, seductive, because deep within it there are ideas, which, if adopted, believed, cherished, could transform consciousness.These are not my ideas alone; they are the ideas of centuries of utopian thought. I want these ideas to permeate people’s consciousness—ideas about the importance of art for human well-being, the end to war as a solution to conflict, the importance of community and the public sphere to a democratic society, and so forth.These ideas are not presented as political messages; they are presented as the struggle for humanity’s survival. I want these ideas to saturate people’s desire as they have mine. And I want the writing to be so engaging that people remember why they love this world and therefore want to protect it and its inhabitants across national and international boundaries. Simply, I always write for people—not for the art world, literary world, sociological world and so forth. I hope the book can cross many boundaries. This is not easy since all books are “shelved” somewhere, whether physically or virtually.But thinking does not fit easily into such categorizations. And the problems of the 21^st century will not be solved by “disciplines” but by ideas and by the willingness of people to extend beyond themselves and their own culture, to recognize themselves in the Other, as part of a species whose evolution should be considered, whose future can be consciously determined.