Cornerstone ─ The Birth of the City in Mesopotamia

Taking us back to the earliest days of cities—and the earliest days of human civilization—in Mesopotamia, Pedro Azara inCornerstone offers a contemporary view on the rise and growth of early cities and urban culture. Investigating ruins and exploring archaeological sites, Azara helps us understand how the earliest cities looked and felt, what the first architects and their buildings were like, and what nascent aesthetic ideals they upheld. Azara’s scholarship is rigorous and far-reaching, but his writing is agile, direct, and entertaining as he not only brings the far-distant past to life, but teases out its relevance for our understanding of contemporary culture as well. The result is a fascinating glimpse into our history and a fresh new take on the origins of the civilization of some of our most ancient ancestors.

Pedro Azara is an architect, a curator, and professor of aesthetics at the ETSAB School of Architecture in Barcelona.Jeffrey Swartz has translated dozens of books from Spanish into English.