A revelation of the drive and creative flux of the metropolis over time.--Nature A sweeping
history of cities through the millennia--from Mesopotamia to Manhattan--and how they have
propelled Homo sapiens to dominance. Six thousand years ago there were no cities on the
planet. Today more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas and that number
is growing. Weaving together archeology history and contemporary observations Monica Smith
explains the rise of the first urban developments and their connection to our own. She takes
readers on a journey through the ancient world of Tell Brak in modern-day Syria Teotihuacan
and Tenochtitlan in Mexico her own digs in India as well as the more well-known Pompeii Rome
and Athens. Along the way she presents the unique properties that made cities singularly
responsible for the flowering of humankind: the development of networked infrastructure the
rise of an entrepreneurial middle class and the culture of consumption that results in
everything from take-out food to the tell-tale secrets of trash. Cities is an impassioned and
learned account full of fascinating details of daily life in ancient urban centers using
archaeological perspectives to show that the aspects of cities we find most irresistible (and
the most annoying) have been with us since the very beginnings of urbanism itself. She also
proves the rise of cities was hardly inevitable yet it was crucial to the eventual global
dominance of our species--and that cities are here to stay.
