The fl�neur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the fl�neuse who captures the imagination of Elkin. She takes us on a cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she's lived. Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.