Four Lost Cities

A Secret History of the Urban Age

By: Annalee Newitz

Narrated by: Chloe Cannon

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy's southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers-slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers-who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.

Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

©2021 Annalee Newitz (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Interesting investigation of urban history

A really interesting investigation into the formation and decline of cities across human history. Newitz uses archeological evidence to make the case that the evolution and dissolution of cities is not a linear path, that the very definition of a "city" and is growth are defined more by socio-cultural forces of its time than by rigid and often arbitrary models based solely on commerce. She then cleverly weaves in the latent warnings present in our urban past about our potentially disastrous future.

çatalhöyük

The book has fascinating details about lost cities. çatalhöyük and Pompeii are the most interesting for me.

Food for thought

This book has an interesting premise, but admittedly I had a hard time getting through it. There are some interesting details about ancient societies and the way that lived but much of it felt irrelevant to why cities decline.

Not bad

Author states that its from a journalist perspective, so for that reason I think it's well done. If it were to be purely historical, I would be more critical. I particularly enjoyed the remarks against Diamond, as that came up in my Anthropology and Archeology classes.

FASCINATING

Super interesting topics, wonderfully told. Even just hearing about how historians are able to piece together so much history out of tiny fragments is incredible. The weaving together and analysis and insights into humanity still feel very current and relevant. Truly fantastic read