BERLIN: The Politics of Order, 1737-1989 <i> by Alan Balfour (Rizzoli: $39.95; 254 pp.)</i> .

If cities have a soul, then for most of its war-torn, troubled history, Berlin’s soul has reposed in Potsdammer Platz and Leipziger Platz. These adjacent expanses were in effect Berlin’s bustling Times Square, the place to see and be seen, from the early 18th Century until they were reduced to rubble in World War II and literally divided soon afterward by the Wall. It also was the place for some of Germany’s most ambitious architectural and sculptural monuments--some realized, such as Schinkel’s Gates, Mendelsohn’s Columbus Haus and Mies van der Rohe’s National Gallery, and some happily unrealized, such as Speer’s Palace of the Reich Marshal for Hitler. In recent years, much of it was a desolate no-man’s land between the two Germanys. For architectural educator Alan Balfour, the evolution of these squares is a dramatic example of how design reflects social and political events. With a broad selection of anecdotal materials and a wealth of photographs, drawings and maps, Balfour has sketched a welcome, albeit awkward, portrait of architecture in a provocative historical context.