Book excerpt: Starbucks, Microsoft, Amazon.com, World Trade Organisation, grunge music - all concepts that have now become synonymous with Seattle. Selling Seattle: Representing Contemporary Urban America is the first book to examine the impact of Seattle on contemporary culture and to account for the city's rapid rise to fame and influence since the early 1990s. Interdisciplinary in approach - broaching current debates from urban geography and interrogations of economic and cultural globalisation to cinema and media studies - this volume looks closely at the city's representation on film and television as well as in journalism and literature, and also considers the ways in which famous Seattle brands such as Microsoft, Starbucks and grunge worked to establish the city as a symbol of urban desire and fantasy in recent years. Selling Seattle is required reading for anyone who seeks to understand the contemporary American city, and the powerful trends that shape the urban landscape and its place in the popular imagination.