上海夜晚街道的脉动节奏吸引了许多旅人，这里的夜景是让它成为世界大城的要素之一。社会学家James Farrer 与历史学家Andrew David Field在《夜上海》一书中检视了一九二〇年代时在上海首次出现的夜生活以及从其从一九八〇年代开始所经历的复甦。两位作者透过超过二十年的实地考察及上百份的访谈，聚焦于藏身于夜生活欢愉里的世界—过去这一个世纪以来，在上海舞厅及酒吧蓬勃发展的跳舞、喝酒与社交活动。
 
这本书首先从出现在上海外国租界区宴会厅及夜总会里的爵士舞历史开始谈起。一九三〇年代是上海的鼎盛时期，这里融合中国与西方文化的爵士歌舞闻名全球。到了一九九〇年代，饮酒、音乐与性文化的泛滥共同建构了当地人与游客间的全新交集。今日上海的夜景里，同时存在着不平等与摩擦，来自不同地区的男性与女性在这里为了社经地位与关注互相竞争着，跨文化社区也就这样成形了。《夜上海》点出了这个城市的夜生活在一个动荡的世纪里，仍保有它的持续性，以及在这个中国最大的国际城市里，夜生活中多元文化的媒介对塑造一个大都市文化的重要性。
 
好评
“In Shanghai Nightscapes, Farrer and Field use historical and ethnographic methods to shed new light on a question that has intrigued many scholars, novelists, journalists, and travel writers. Namely, to what extent have patterns from Shanghai’s celebrated and notorious jazz age past reemerged in the contemporary era, as the protean city has become once again a hub for flows into China of foreign ideas, fashions, and lifestyles. Drawing on fiction, archival documents, interviews, and personal observations, they provide a vivid account of nocturnal life in two eras. They also demonstrate how much can be learned about continuity and change in a cosmopolitan metropolis by zeroing in on how residents of different nationalities disport themselves in dance halls, discos, clubs, and bars.”
(Jeffrey Wasserstrom, author of Global Shanghai and China in the 21st Century)
 
“Farrer and Field, two long-time observers of Shanghai’s cultural scene, have written a compelling new book on the history of the nightlife in Shanghai from the Jazz Age to the market reform. With intimate knowledge on Shanghai’s clubbing scenes, the book tells a story of both continuity and change in the sexual culture and nightlife of China’s most cosmopolitan city. Shanghai emerges in the book as a nodal ‘global city’ at the crossroad of the transnational nightclub cultures. It’s a must-read for students interested in urban China, cultural studies, sexuality, and globalization.”
(Xuefei Ren, author of Building Globalization and Urban China)
 
“A  unique exploration of Shanghai’s clubs, bars, and dance halls that explains how and why Shanghai has once again become an epicenter of cosmopolitan nightlife. Drawing on a rich array of magazines, films, and many nights interviewing Shanghai entrepreneurs, performers, and club hoppers, Farrer and Field expertly ground their brilliant introduction to contemporary night life in a superb social history of Shanghai in the Jazz Age.”
(Deborah Davis coeditor, Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China)
 
目录
Preface
1          Scenes and Nightscapes          
2          The Golden Age of the Jazz Cabaret
3          The Fall and Rise of Social Dance
4          Transnational Club Cultures
5          Imbibing Cosmopolitanism
6          Jazz Metropolis
7          Nightlife Sexual Scenes
8          From Interzones to Transzones
9          Nightlife Neighborhoods
Notes
Index
 
关于作者
James Farrer 东京上智大学（Sophia University）社会学与全球研究的教授，也是Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai一书的作者，这本书同样由University of Chicago Press出版。
 
Andrew David Field是Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919–1954与 Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist 两本书的作者。