"Soul of the City" is an updated edition of "The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce", originally published in 1982. Its publication marks the centennial anniversary of Seattle's favorite institution, the Pike Place Market. A space that annually draws more people than any of the city's major sporting and cultural events, Pike Place has a reputation among American markets that is comparable to Les Halles in Paris and Convent Garden in London - the difference being that it has survived. Survival of the peoples' market has not been easy for Pike Place, and "Soul of the City" illustrates the many people who have fought to sustain it.There have always been those who have wanted to 'improve' the Market by bringing it into conformity with the development spirit of the moment but somehow the Pike Place Market buildings remain on the face of a bluff, descending story by story to Western Avenue, with windows open to vistas of Elliott Bay, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains. People arrive from farms and city neighborhoods to shop, sell, gather with friends, and take in the view. This book tells the story of the reformers who conceived of the Market, the happenstance amalgam of entrepreneurs and populists who brought it into being, the truck farmers who brought in their produce and their hopes, the people of Seattle who came to think of the Market as their birthright, and the recurring battles to keep progress from paving and reshaping it.