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Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention
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52
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
65/100Critics
40/100Scholars
Author:
Ben Wilson
Publisher:
Doubleday
Date:
November 10, 2020
A journey through 7,000 years and twenty-six world cities that shows how urban living has been the spur and incubator to humankind's greatest innovations.
What The Reviewers Say
... [an] excellent, thought-provoking, heady urban chronicle.
... Wilson’s fascinating history of cities, Metropolis, lacks a central thesis (its only significant flaw), but it’s not hard to supply one: cities intensify life.
... perhaps it’s not the ideal moment to publish Metropolis, an ode to cities and cosmopolitan life as 'humankind’s greatest invention,' according to its subtitle. In a hastily added few paragraphs in the introduction.
Reading Metropolis, Ben Wilson's ambitious history of the city writ large, is akin to confronting all this urban potential energy. Chapters are tied to specific times and places, but the scale of the undertaking and the interconnectedness of the globe mocks a truly linear approach.
