The collection consists of two brilliant memoir-like texts written by Walter Benjamin in the mid-1920s ("One-Way Street") and the early 1930s ("Berlin Childhood around 1900"). Both texts are composed of fragments that insightfully analyze the fabric of everyday life.

The recurring themes—interaction between past and present, the silent march of history, nostalgia, collecting, and more—closely link this seemingly non-essential autobiographical prose to Benjamin's major theoretical projects. These projects are dedicated to Baudelaire, the cultural history of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and, more broadly, the fate of modernity.