Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention

During the two hundred millennia we've been on the planet, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. In a fascinating narrative that ranges through cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious story of how urban living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning with Uruk, the world's first city, he shows that cities created such a blossoming of human endeavor--new professions, new forms of art, worship, and trade--that they kick-started civilization itself. Despite outbreaks of plague and war, and outlasting empires, the city endured and new cities sprang up to capture the inimitable energy of human beings together.

Wilson reveals the innovations nurturned amid the density of urban centers over the centuries: 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, the skyscrapers of New York City inspired utopian visions of community design, while the trees of twenty-first-century Seattle and Shanghai point to a sustainable future in the age of climate change. Page turning and irresistible, Metropolis is a history of cities that is also a history of how humanity lives.