Celebrating the Great Cities of the Ages
This is part of Pioneer’s ongoing series of blogs on curricular resources for parents, teachers, and students during COVID-19.
“From Mesopotamia to Megalopolis,” is how the late British historian John Julius Norwich began his sweeping history of great cities in human history. When, how, and why humans have left behind their often more rural, agricultural, and provincial worlds to found cities (often towering ones), which feature walls, laws, armies, navies, trade, libraries, and greater structures of civilization is a topic that philosophers, historians, and statesmen have wondered about and tried to better understand for thousands of years.
Some thinkers like Plato have conceived ideal city-states, while lawgivers in every age struggle to establish ordered liberty that harnesses and governs the multiplicity of real-world factions, interests, and turmoil that often characterize urban life. Interestingly, this impulse to establish cities and larger polities is universally human – being found all over the globe and in nearly every era. The ancient world had, in 3,000 BC, Uruk, comprised of 30,000 to 50,000 people on the Mesopotamian Delta; Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt; Jerusalem, the center of the world’s three major religions; as well as the great cradles of democracy, law, militarism, republicanism, and empire in the Western world – Athens, Sparta, and later Rome.
These city-states, and Renaissance ones like Florence, Milan, Venice, and Naples, gave us the ideas, arts, buildings, faiths, constitutions, and commercial arrangements on which our modern world was founded. We ignore their histories, stories, enduring lessons, contributions, and wisdom at our own peril. Some of these ancient capitals still exist even today and we visit them to see their grandeur and their ruins.
Modern cities, with their millions of people – places like London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Mexico City, New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, shape our world with their politics, finance, culture, and technologies. These places seem gargantuan, impersonal, ungovernable, and inhuman in scale compared to antiquity. Nevertheless, they wrestle with the same fundamental human questions – laws and lawlessness, education and citizenship, fights between the haves and have nots, fiscal strengths and weaknesses, and hopes and fears about rising and falling – that have always furrowed the brows of kings, leaders, and their advisors. These are the kinds of problems that have ennobled some societies and torn others to pieces.
“New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments…,” wrote James Weldon Johnson in his 1912 classic, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Across the entire arc of human history, cities have enticed, bewitched, and enchanted people to strive, experiment, communicate, create, trade, rebel, worship, perform, play, and establish new modes of literature, science, arts, businesses, and laws. Great cities have continuously shaped and reshaped our planet for thousands of years.
Sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, cities have trampled their pilgrims, subjects, citizens, immigrants, and inhabitants under their feet. But it’s fundamentally human to reach to achieve and excel, and the great cities of the world are where, through the ages, that struggle to reinvent human civilizations has generally occurred. We must ensure that, during the current tumult and tensions of our times, citizens, parents, teachers, and especially students, never forget that respecting the rule of law is central to the life and death of great cities. We’re providing a variety of resources to educate people about cities and their central role in driving and understanding our past and shaping our future.
Athens: A Portrait of the City in Its Golden Age, by Christian Meier (Author), Robert Kimber (Translator)
“A lively and accessible history of Athens's rise to greatness, from one of the foremost classical historians. The definitive account of Athens in the age of Pericles, Christian Meier's gripping study begins with the Greek triumph over Persia at the Battle of Salamis, one of the most significant military victories in history. Meier shows how that victory decisively established Athens's military dominance in the Mediterranean and made possible its rise to preeminence in almost every field of human endeavor--commerce, science, philosophy, art, architecture, and literature. Within seventy-five years, Athens had become the most original and innovative civilization the ancient world ever produced. With elegant narrative style, Meier traces the birth of democracy and the flourishing of Greek culture in the fifth century B.C., as well as Athens' slow decline and defeat in the Peloponnesian War. The great figures--from politicians and generals like Themistocles and Alcibiades to the philosophers Socrates and Plato--emerge as flesh-and-blood human beings, firmly rooted in their times and places. This is history in the tradition of Simon Schama and Barbara Tuchman--learned, accessible, and beautifully written.”
The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern Mind, by Justin Pollard (Author) and Howard Reid (Author)
“A history of the ancient city documents its period superiority as an archaeological and technological super power, revealing how atomic theory, geometry, the steam engine, and other developments were initiated there while tracing the city's downfall and ultimate legacy to the modern world.”
The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens and Rome, by Peter Connolly (Author) and Hazel Dodge (Author)
“In this superbly illustrated volume, Athens and Rome, the two greatest cities of antiquity, spring to life under the masterful pen of Peter Connolly. All the historical and archaeological evidence has been seamlessly pieced together to reconstruct the architectural wonders of these mighty civilizations. Re-creating public buildings, religious temples, shops, and houses, Connolly reveals every aspect of life in glorious detail, from religion and food to drama, games, and the baths. In addition to the great monuments and moments of classical Greece and Rome, readers learn about a typical day in the life of an Athenian and a Roman. They read about and see the houses people inhabited; attend 5 day festivals and go to the theater; fight great battles and witness the birth of Rome's navy; visit temples and spend a day at the chariot races. The spectacular artwork and vivid descriptions provide a window into the fascinating history of these two extraordinary cities and civilizations. The Ancient City is the crowning achievement of Peter Connolly's distinguished career.”
Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood–A History in Thirteen Centuries, by Justin Marozzi
“For much of its extraordinary life, Baghdad, known for centuries as the "City of Peace," enjoyed both cultural and commercial preeminence. For five centuries it was the seat of the Abbasid Empire, a marvel of glittering palaces, exquisite parks, magnificent mosques, and Islamic colleges. It was a city boasting the most accomplished astronomers, mathematicians, doctors, musicians, and poets—it was here, in the time of the caliphs, that the great Arabic classic One Thousand and One Nights was set. With its teeming markets watered by the Tigris, Baghdad was a thriving trading emporium, attracting merchants from Central Asia to the Atlantic; its economy was the envy of West and East alike. Yet Baghdad's inhabitants have also seen many terrible hardships, from epidemics and famines to invasions and devastating floods. And it has also been one of the most violent cities on earth. When U.S. troops entered in 2003, they became the latest participants in a turbulent history stretching back to the city's founding in 762. Over most of its thirteen-century history, Baghdad has endured the rule of brutal strongmen, from capricious caliphs to Saddam Hussein; and it has suffered violent occupations at the hands of its conquerors, from the Mongol Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan, to Tamerlane, known as the "Sword Arm of Israel." Here, in this vivid new history—the first published in English in nearly a century—Justin Marozzi brings to life the whole splendorous and tumultuous story of what was once the greatest capital on earth.”
The Great Cities in History, by John Julius Norwich
“A portrait of world civilization told through the stories of the world's greatest cities from ancient times to the present. Today, for the first time in history, the majority of people in the world live in cities. The implications and challenges associated with this fact are enormous. But how did we get here? From the origins of urbanization in Mesopotamia to the global metropolises of today, great cities have marked the development of human civilization. The Great Cities in History tells their stories, starting with the earliest, from Uruk and Memphis to Jerusalem and Alexandria. Next come the fabulous cities of the first millennium: Damascus and Baghdad, Teotihuacan and Tikal, and Chang’an, capital of Tang Dynasty China. The medieval world saw the rise of powerful cities such as Palermo and Paris in Europe, Benin in Africa, and Angkor in southeast Asia. The last two sections bring us from the early modern world, with Isfahan, Agra, and Amsterdam, to the contemporary city: London and New York, Tokyo and Barcelona, Los Angeles and Sao Paulo. The distinguished contributors, including Jan Morris, Michael D. Coe, Simon Schama, Orlando Figes, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Misha Glenny, Susan Toby Evans, and A. N. Wilson, evoke the character of each place?people, art and architecture, government?and explain the reasons for its success.”
Palaces of the Forbidden City, by Yu Zhuoyun
“This fascinating work provides not only a comprehensive survey of the overall design and layout of the Forbidden City (the Peking Imperial Palace), but also an analysis of each building, detailing the craftsmanship involved and the materials used on each of its component parts, with the help of maps, charts and diagrams. For the first time, photographers have been allowed into parts of the City normally closed to visitors. Illustrated with some of the most beautiful photographs of Chinese architecture ever taken, this work brings to the reader, a highly authoritative and visually stunning guide to what must surely be one of the great wonders of the Eastern world.”
Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century, by Martin Gilbert
“In this highly readable and informative history Martin Gilbert highlights the history of the 3,000 year old City of David, from 1900, when it was a small provincial Ottoman town (with a Jewish majority since 1840) until the 1990s.”
Rome: The Biography of a City, by Christopher Hibbert
“Traces the history of Rome from the time of the Etruscans to Mussolini, looks at the artists, intellectuals, and religious and political leaders who have shaped its destiny, and examines Roman society.”
A History of Tokyo 1867-1989: From EDO to SHOWA: The Emergence of the World’s Greatest City, by Edward Seidensticker (Author) and Donald Richie (Preface)
“Edward Seidensticker's A History of Tokyo 1867-1989 tells the fascinating story of Tokyo's transformation from the Shogun's capital in an isolated Japan to the largest and the most modern city in the world. With the same scholarship and sparkling style that won him admiration as the foremost translator of great works of Japanese literature, Seidensticker offers the reader his brilliant vision of an entire society suddenly wrenched from an ancient feudal past into the modern world in a few short decades, and the enormous stresses and strains that this brought with it. Originally published as two volumes, Seidensticker's masterful work is now available in a handy, single paperback volume. Whether you're a history buff or Tokyo-bound traveler looking to learn more, this insightful book offers a fascinating look at how the Tokyo that we know came to be. This edition contains an introduction by Donald Richie, the acknowledged expert on Japanese culture who was a close personal friend of the author, and a preface by geographer Paul Waley that puts the book into perspective for modern readers.”
Florence: The Biography of a City, by Christopher Hibbert
“This book is as captivating as the city itself. Hibbert's gift is weaving political, social and art history into an elegantly readable and marvelously lively whole. The author's book on Florence will also be at once a history and a guide book and will be enhanced by splendid photographs and illustrations and line drawings which will describe all the buildings and treasures of the city.”
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, by Bettany Hughes
“Istanbul has long been a place where stories and histories collide, where perception is as potent as fact. From the Koran to Shakespeare, this city with three names - Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul - resonates as an idea and a place, real and imagined. Standing as the gateway between East and West, North and South, it has been the capital city of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires. For much of its history it was the very center of the world, known simply as "The City," but, as Bettany Hughes reveals, Istanbul is not just a city, but a global story. In this epic new biography, Hughes takes us on a dazzling historical journey from the Neolithic to the present, through the many incarnations of one of the world's greatest cities - exploring the ways that Istanbul's influence has spun out to shape the wider world. Hughes investigates what it takes to make a city and tells the story not just of emperors, viziers, caliphs, and sultans, but of the poor and the voiceless, of the women and men whose aspirations and dreams have continuously reinvented Istanbul. Written with energy and animation, award-winning historian Bettany Hughes deftly guides listeners through Istanbul's rich layers of history.”
Venice: Pure City, by Peter Ackroyd
“Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial—a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the ultimate city. The Venetians’ language and way of thinking set them aside from the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and to the tides rather than the land. This latest work from the incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its readers to that sensual and surprising city. His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the festivals and the flowers. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and its trading empire, the wars against Napoleon, and the tourist invasions of today. Everything is here: the merchants on the Rialto and the Jews in the ghetto; the glassblowers of Murano; the carnival masks and the sad colonies of lepers; the artists—Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo. And the ever-present undertone of Venice’s shadowy corners and dead ends, of prisons and punishment, wars and sieges, scandals and seductions. Ackroyd’s Venice: Pure City is a study of Venice much in the vein of his lauded London: The Biography. Like London, Venice is a fluid, writerly exploration organized around a number of themes. History and context are provided in each chapter, but Ackroyd’s portrait of Venice is a particularly novelistic one, both beautiful and rapturous. We could have no better guide—reading Venice: Pure City is, in itself, a glorious journey to the ultimate city.”
London: The Biography, by Peter Ackroyd
“This magnificent evocation of all that London has meant down the centuries...I cannot begin to describe the richness with which Ackroyd pursues his theme...A blend of virtuosity and deep affection that is truly bewitching. Ackroyd has performed a noble public service in preserving in these pages so many centuries of marvels, and secrecies.” –Jan Morris. London: The Biography is the pinnacle of Peter Ackroyd’s brilliant obsession with the eponymous city. In this unusual and engaging work, Ackroyd brings the reader through time into the city whose institutions and idiosyncrasies have permeated much of his works of fiction and nonfiction. Peter Ackroyd sees London as a living, breathing organism, with its own laws of growth and change. Reveling in the city’s riches as well as its raucousness, the author traces thematically its growth from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Anecdotal, insightful, and wonderfully entertaining, London is animated by Ackroyd’s concern for the close relationship between the present and the past, as well as by what he describes as the peculiar “echoic” quality of London, whereby its texture and history actively affect the lives and personalities of its citizens. London confirms Ackroyd’s status as what one critic has called “our age’s greatest London imagination.”
Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin, by Alexandra Richie
“Beautifully conceived and marvelously researched. I haven’t read a better book on Berlin. Gordon A. Craig In Berlin, history is tangible. The sense of the past of Europe, of Germany, and of the 20th-centurys myths, depravities, idealism and horror hangs in the air around the old Hinterhofs and deserted railway stations. No other city has played such a part in the tides of 20th-century European affairs. Faust’s Metropolis follows the rich and inspiring history of this city: from the revolutionary fervor of its teeming slums, the insufferable pomp of Imperial Berlin, and the frantic modernism of Weimar to the brutality of the Nazis and the symbolic defeat of Communism as the Wall came down. Writing superbly of Berlin’s role as a crucible of change, Alexandra Richie reveals herself as an extraordinary new talent.”
Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership, by Edward Digby Baltzell
“Based on the biographies of some three hundred people in each city, this book shows how such distinguished Boston families as the Adamses, Cabots, Lowells, and Peabodys have produced many generations of men and women who have made major contributions to the intellectual, educational, and political life of their state and nation. At the same time, comparable Philadelphia families such as the Biddles, Cadwaladers, Ingersolls, and Drexels have contributed far fewer leaders to their state and nation. From the days of Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Girard down to the present, what leadership there has been in Philadelphia has largely been provided by self-made men, often, like Franklin, born outside Pennsylvania. Baltzell traces the differences in class authority and leadership in these two cites to the contrasting values of the Puritan founders of the Bay Colony and the Quaker founders of the City of Brotherly Love. While Puritans placed great value on the "calling" or devotion to one's chosen vocation, Quakers have always placed more emphasis on being a good person than on being a good judge or statesman. Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia presents a provocative view of two contrasting upper classes and also reflects the author's larger concern with the conflicting values of hierarchy and egalitarianism in American history.”
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 and Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (The History of NYC Series), by Edwin G. Burrows (Author) and Mike Wallace (Author)
“To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe.”
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, by Jacob A. Riis
“2015 Reprint of 1957 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Originally published in 1890, this is the classic indictment of slum life, written by one of the most famous reformers of the nineteenth century. "How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York" explained not only the living conditions in New York slums, but also in the sweatshops in some tenements which paid workers only a few cents a day. The book explains the plight of working children; they would work in factories and at other jobs. Some children became garment workers and newsies (newsboys). The effect was the tearing down of New York's worst tenements, sweatshops, and the reform of the city's schools. The book led to a decade of improvements in Lower East Side conditions, with sewers, garbage collection, and indoor plumbing all following soon after, thanks to public reaction. Our edition reprints the 1957 edition, without the photo illustrations done mostly by Riis himself.”
PBS American Experience: Chicago – City of the Century, DVD Box Set
“Once a swampy, remote outpost of fur traders and Native Americans, Chicago rose to become the CITY OF THE CENTURY. The film chronicles its transformation into the quintessential 19th-century metropolis, amid political struggles, labor unrest, and racial conflicts. Tour the city from every angle, from distinctive architecture and dramatic skyline to conversations with eminent and ordinary Chicagoans, in this rich saga of the Windy City.”
Twenty Years At Hull House, by Jane Addams
“Twenty Years at Hull House, the acclaimed memoir of social reformer Jane Addams, is presented here complete with all sixty-three of the original illustrations and the biographical notes. A landmark autobiography in terms of opening the eyes of Americans to the plight of the industrial revolution, Twenty Years at Hull House has been applauded for its unflinching descriptions of the poverty and degradation of the era. Jane Addams also details the grave ill-health she suffered during and after her childhood, giving the reader insight into the adversity which she would re-purpose into a drive to alleviate the suffering of others. The process by which Addams founded Hull House in Chicago is detailed; the sheer scale and severity of the poverty in the city she and others witnessed, the search for the perfect location, and the numerous difficulties she and her fellow activists encountered while establishing and maintaining the house are detailed. Eventually, after years of work, Hull House became a shining example of how intervention in the poorest slums could have remarkable results for the families concerned. Children who regularly attended Hull House enjoyed education and opportunities for creativity. Many went on to experience a prosperous adulthood thanks to the skills and tutoring they gained at the house. Today, Jane Addams is held as a great example of a pioneering spirit, whose social work and social assistance were greatly inspiring to the reforming administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The model Addams established with Hull House was imitated widely; by 1922, over five-hundred settlement houses had been founded across the United States.”
Washington: A History of Our National City, by Tom Lewis
“On January 24, 1791, President George Washington chose the site for the young nation's capital: ten miles square, it stretched from the highest point of navigation on the Potomac River, and encompassed the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria. From the moment the federal government moved to the District of Columbia in December 1800, Washington has been central to American identity and life. Shaped by politics and intrigue, poverty and largess, contradictions and compromises, Washington has been, from its beginnings, the stage on which our national dramas have played out. In Washington, the historian Tom Lewis paints a sweeping portrait of the capital city whose internal conflicts and promise have mirrored those of America writ large. Breathing life into the men and women who struggled to help the city realize its full potential, he introduces us to the mercurial French artist who created an ornate plan for the city "en grande" members of the nearly forgotten anti-Catholic political party who halted construction of the Washington monument for a quarter century; and the cadre of congressmen who maintained segregation and blocked the city's progress for decades. In the twentieth century Washington's Mall and streets would witness a Ku Klux Klan march, the violent end to the encampment of World War I "Bonus Army" veterans, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the painful rebuilding of the city in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. "It is our national center," Frederick Douglass once said of Washington, DC; "it belongs to us, and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered in shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny." Interweaving the story of the city's physical transformation with a nuanced account of its political, economic, and social evolution, Lewis tells the powerful history of Washington, DC "the site of our nation's highest ideals and some of our deepest failures.”
The Shame of the Cities, by Lincoln Steffens
“Renowned muckraker and investigative reporter Lincoln Steffens recounts a series of historic corruption scandals in cities of the United States. The various backhanders and embezzlements occurring in the urban councils of the USA in the late 19th century are recalled here. Though the country was in a period of great development and advancement, this rise to industrial prowess was accompanied by an egregious culture of dishonesty. The development of 'old boy networks', whereby a group of insiders would conspire to siphon public funds and favor one another in matters of politics or business, became a serious problem. Steffens was a leading opponent of such nepotism, and did his utmost to root it out. In this book are images he gained of dishonest accounting; these, among other documentary evidence, led to certain corrupt officials losing their position and facing charges.”
Bibles, Brahmins, and Bosses: A Short History of Boston, by Thomas H. O’Connor
Paris. Portrait of a City, by Jean Claude Gautrand
“A city built on two millennia of history, Paris is entering the third century of its love story with photography. It was on the banks of the Seine that Niépce and Daguerre officially gave birth to this new art that has flourished ever since, developing a distinctive language and becoming a vital tool of knowledge. Paris: Portrait of a City leads us through what Goethe described as a “universal city where every step upon a bridge or a square recalls a great past, where a fragment of history is unrolled at the corner of every street.” The history of Paris is recounted in photographs ranging from Daguerre’s early incunabula to the most recent images?an almost complete record of over a century and a half of transformations and a vast panorama spanning more than 600 pages and 500 photographs. This book brings together the past and the present, the monumental and the everyday, objects and people. Images captured by the most illustrious photographers?Daguerre, Marville, Atget, Lartigue, Brassaï, Kertész, Ronis, Doisneau, Cartier-Bresson, and many more?but also by many unknown photographers, attempt to bottle just a little of that “Parisian air,” something of that particular poetry given out by the stones and inhabitants of a constantly changing city that has inspired untold numbers of writers and artists over the ages. Presenting an exciting patchwork of images from past and present, Paris: Portrait of a City is a huge and unique photographic study that, in a way, is the true family album of all Parisians. It is to them, and to all lovers of this capital city, that this vibrant, loving, and tender testimony is dedicated.”
PBS American Experience: New York. A Documentary Film, by Ric Burns (DVD Box Set)
“An elegant, lyrical and compelling portrait of the greatest and most complex of cities. This definitive series chronicles the history of New York from its founding in 1624 as a Dutch trading post to its continuing pre-eminence as the cultural and economic capital of the world.”
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
“A direct and fundamentally optimistic indictment of the short-sightedness and intellectual arrogance that has characterized much of urban planning in this century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities has, since its first publication in 1961, become the standard against which all endeavors in that field are measured. In prose of outstanding immediacy, Jane Jacobs writes about what makes streets safe or unsafe; about what constitutes a neighborhood, and what function it serves within the larger organism of the city; about why some neighborhoods remain impoverished while others regenerate themselves. She writes about the salutary role of funeral parlors and tenement windows, the dangers of too much development money and too little diversity. Compassionate, bracingly indignant, and always keenly detailed, Jane Jacobs's monumental work provides an essential framework for assessing the vitality of all cities.”
Memphis Mayhem: A Story of the Music That Shook Up the World, by David A. Less
“Memphis gave birth to music that changed the world ? Memphis Mayhem is a fascinating history of how music and culture collided to change the state of music forever. Memphis Mayhem weaves the tale of the racial collision that led to a cultural, sociological, and musical revolution. David Less constructs a fascinating narrative of the city that has produced a startling array of talent, including Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Al Green, Otis Redding, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Justin Timberlake, and so many more Beginning with the 1870s yellow fever epidemics that created racial imbalance as wealthy whites fled the city, David Less moves from W.C. Handy’s codification of blues in 1909 to the mid-century advent of interracial musical acts like Booker T. & the M.G.’s, the birth of punk, and finally to the growth of a music tourism industry Memphis Mayhem explores the city’s entire musical ecosystem, which includes studios, high school band instructors, clubs, record companies, family bands, pressing plants, instrument factories, and retail record outlets. Lively and comprehensive, this is a provocative story of finding common ground through music and creating a sound that would change the world.”
Havana: History and Architecture of a Romantic City, by Maria Luisa Lobo Montalvo (Author), Lorna S. Fox (Translator), Hugh Thomas (Contributor)
“Havana, the legendary capital of Cuba, bears the traces of every stage of the island's rich history, from its indigenous traditions to the introduction of European culture in the late fifteenth century to the development of the unique amalgam of these influences that is unmistakably Cuban. In this exquisite volume, author María Luisa Lobo Montalvo presents the architecture and history of Havana—part of which has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site—in an accessible and engaging text and specially commissioned color photographs. Among the structures featured are the famed great forts such as Castillo del Morro and Castillo de la Punta, the city's oldest extant structures; an array of houses, from all periods of Havana's history and in all styles, simultaneously offering architectural and cultural history; and the great churches, including the Church of La Merced and the great baroque Havana Cathedral, and institutional structures, such as the magnificent Palace of the Captains General, showing the public face of Havana at its most resplendent. Discussions of each phase of the city's development are accompanied by detailed case studies of the period's most significant buildings, which include the architectural history and heritage of each structure as well as comprehensive new and archival documentation, including photographs, prints, paintings, and historical artifacts. Throughout her presentation of the buildings, Lobo Montalvo reveals the unique expression of design and decorative elements, customs and traditions that characterize the architecture of Havana.”
Detroit: A Biography, by Scott Martelle
“At its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, Detroit's status as epicenter of the American auto industry made it a vibrant, populous, commercial hub—and then the bottom fell out. Detroit: A Biography takes a long, unflinching look at the evolution of one of America's great cities and one of the nation's greatest urban failures. This authoritative yet accessible narrative seeks to explain how the city grew to become the heart of American industry and how its utter collapse—from nearly two million residents in 1950 to less than 715,000 some six decades later—resulted from a confluence of public policies, private industry decisions, and deeply ingrained racism. Drawing from U.S. Census data and including profiles of individuals who embody the recent struggles and hopes of the city, this book chronicles the evolution of what a modern city once was and what it has become.”
Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention, by Ben Wilson
“From a brilliant young historian, a colorful journey through 7,000 years and twenty-six world cities that shows how urban living has been the spur and incubator to humankind's greatest innovations. In the two hundred millennia of our existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. Historian Ben Wilson, author of bestselling and award-winning books on British history, now tells the grand, glorious story of how city living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning with Uruk, the world's first city, dating to 5000 BC and memorably portrayed in the Epic of Gilgamesh, he shows us that cities were never a necessity but that once they existed their density created such a blossoming of human endeavor--producing new professions, forms of art, worship, and trade--that they kick-started nothing less than civilization. Guiding readers through famous cities over 7,000 years, he reveals the innovations driven by each: civics in the agora of Athens, global trade in ninth-century Baghdad, finance in the coffeehouses of London, domestic comforts in the heart of Amsterdam, peacocking in Belle Epoque Paris. In the modern age, he studies the impact of verticality in New York City, the sprawl of L.A., and the eco-reimagining of twenty-first-century Shanghai. Lively, erudite, page turning, and irresistible, Metropolis is a grand tour of human achievement.”
Vienna: Art and Architecture, by Rolf Toman (Author), Achim Bednorz (Photographer)
“At the mention of Vienna, many visitors think of Sachertorte, romantic open carriage trips and an evening in one of local wine taverns. But the old imperial city has much more to offer - Vienna presents a comprehensive, richly illustrated view of the art treasures to be found in the Danube metropolis. The main focus is on the baroque era with its magnificent church buildings and palaces including the Hofburg, Schönbrunn and Belvedere; historicism with its architectural highlights on the new Ringstrasse; and Viennese art nouveau including artists Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, the Wiener Werkstätte und Sezession. Well-founded essays on the beginnings of the history of art in Vienna and on the state of contemporary Viennese art round off the book.”
City of a Million Dreams: A History of New Orleans at Year 300, by Jason Berry
“In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tercentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.”
The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects, by Lewis Mumford
“WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. A definitive classic. Mumford explores the factors that made Greek cities unique and offers a controversial view of the Roman city concept. He explains how the role of monasticism influenced Christian towns and how mercantile capitalism shapes the modern city today. The City in History remains a powerfully influential work, one that has shaped the agendas of urban planners, sociologists, and social critics since its publication in the 1960s.”
Barcelona, by Robert Hughes
“A monumentally informed and irresistibly opinionated guide to the most un-Spanish city in Spain, from the bestselling author of The Fatal Shore. In these pages, Robert Hughes scrolls through Barcelona's often violent history; tells the stories of its kings, poets, magnates, and revolutionaries; and ushers readers through municipal landmarks that range from Antoni Gaudi's sublimely surreal cathedral to a postmodern restaurant with a glass-walled urinal. The result is a work filled with the attributes of Barcelona itself: proportion, humor, and seny—the Catalan word for triumphant common sense.”
The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles, by Gary Krist
“From bestselling author Gary Krist, the story of the metropolis that never should have been and the visionaries who dreamed it into reality. Little more than a century ago, the southern coast of California—bone-dry, harbor-less, isolated by deserts and mountain ranges—seemed destined to remain scrappy farmland. Then, as if overnight, one of the world’s iconic cities emerged. At the heart of Los Angeles’ meteoric rise were three flawed visionaries: William Mulholland, an immigrant ditch-digger turned self-taught engineer, designed the massive aqueduct that would make urban life here possible. D.W. Griffith, who transformed the motion picture from a vaudeville-house novelty into a cornerstone of American culture, gave L.A. its signature industry. And Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist who founded a religion, cemented the city’s identity as a center for spiritual exploration. All were masters of their craft, but also illusionists, of a kind. The images they conjured up—of a blossoming city in the desert, of a factory of celluloid dreamworks, of a community of seekers finding personal salvation under the California sun—were like mirages liable to evaporate on closer inspection. All three would pay a steep price to realize these dreams, in a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design that threatened to topple each of their personal empires. Yet when the dust settled, the mirage that was LA remained.”
Cities in Civilization, by Sir Peter Hall
“Ranging over 2,500 years, Cities in Civilization is a tribute to the city as the birthplace of Western civilization. Drawing on the contributions of economists and geographers, of cultural, technological, and social historians, Sir Peter Hall examines twenty-one cities at their greatest moments. Hall describes the achievements of these golden ages and outlines the precise combinations of forces -- both universal and local -- that led to each city's belle epoque.”
