In 1962 a lone astronaut orbiting the Earth sighted a small cluster of lights on the dark silhouette of Australia's western coastline - a token of friendship from the people of Perth that prompted the world's media to dub this isolated provincial outpost the "City of Light." This book expands the metaphor by shedding new light on the social history of Perth since the 1950s. Its focus is the city center and the events that unfolded there. After a lively sketch of prewar Perth, Jenny Gregory ventures into the historically uncharted territory of the postwar era. The result is a frank, incisive and richly detailed investigation of the city's growth and transformation over a fifty-year period, from the modernist era of postwar reconstruction to the mid-nineties.