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

Capa
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 10/11/2020 - 464 páginas
In a captivating tour of cities famous and forgotten, acclaimed historian Ben Wilson tells the glorious, millennia-spanning story how urban living sparked humankind's greatest innovations.
 
“A towering achievement.... Reading this book is like visiting an exhilarating city for the first time—dazzling.” —The Wall Street Journal


During the two hundred millennia of humanity’s existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. From their very beginnings, cities created such a flourishing of human endeavor—new professions, new forms of art, worship and trade—that they kick-started civilization. Guiding us through the centuries, Wilson reveals the innovations nurtured by the inimitable energy of human beings together: 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 Époque 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, irresistible, and rich with engrossing detail, Metropolis is a brilliant demonstration that the story of human civilization is the story of cities.
 

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Índice

List of Illustrations
The Metropolitan Century
Uruk 40001900
Harappa and Babylon 2000539
Athens and Alexandria 50730
Rome 30 BCAD 537
Baghdad 5371258
Lübeck 12261491
The Gates of Hell? Manchester and Chicago 18301914
Paris 18301914
New York 18991939
Warsaw 193945
Los Angeles 194599
Lagos 19992020
Illustrations Acknowledgements
Notes

Lisbon Malacca Tenochtitlan Amsterdam 14921666
London 16661820

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Acerca do autor (2020)

BEN WILSON has an undergraduate and master's degree in history from Cambridge. He is the author of five previous books, including What Price Liberty?, for which he received the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Sunday Times bestseller Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy. He has consulted for various TV history programs and appeared on TV and on national radio in the U.S., UK, and Ireland. He has written for The Spectator, The Literary Review, The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman, Men's Health, The Guardian Online, and GQ.

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