-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Magisterial Exploration of the Nature and Impact of the City from Its Beginnings to the Mega-Conurbations of Today
by John Reader
An eye-opening journey from the earliest settlements in Mesopotamia to the sprawling megalopolises of today—Tokyo, Mexico City, and Sao Paolo. Reader reveals how cities came to be, what made them thrive, how they declined, and how they remade themselves. He debunks long-held theories and shows that the first cities actually preceded and inspired the growth of farming; that trees grow better in cities; and that even though three thousand years separated Imperial Rome from the Sumerian cities, their everyday lives were quite similar and share commonalities with our lives today.
'Although heavy on statistics, this thorough and readable look at urban growth will interest historians, anthropologists, sociologists and urban dwellers.' - Publishers Weekly
This information about Cities was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
If you liked Cities, try these:
by Moudhy Al-Rashid
Published 2026
Humanity's earliest efforts at recording and drawing meaning from history reveal how lives millennia ago were not so different from our own.
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Published 2024
The first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth • Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical—is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories
by David Graeber
Published 2023
A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution―from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality―and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
