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leifalreadyexists 's review for:
Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age
by Annalee Newitz
Çatalhöyük. Pompeii. Angkor. Cahokia. Four names of sites that once where thriving metropolises, and that Annalee Newitz excavates on page for you so that they ring with meaning once again.
Like many great recent archeologically-inspired studies for the popular audience (I am thinking of Cat Jarman's River Kings, there's a lot that's quite dull here to substantiate the shiny gloss where Newitz performs more imaginative recreations. Excavation this, dig that, and quote researcher X whose authority is based on a life in the trenches. It's very dutiful, but the parts of the book that shined best for me were those where Newitz ascends to actual argument about understandings of societal rise, fall, and collapse. That these were dispersed across their examples to me is a failing of their journalistic case study method, but no matter.
An interesting book, and in many ways, despite its stated intentions, a timely one.
Like many great recent archeologically-inspired studies for the popular audience (I am thinking of Cat Jarman's River Kings, there's a lot that's quite dull here to substantiate the shiny gloss where Newitz performs more imaginative recreations. Excavation this, dig that, and quote researcher X whose authority is based on a life in the trenches. It's very dutiful, but the parts of the book that shined best for me were those where Newitz ascends to actual argument about understandings of societal rise, fall, and collapse. That these were dispersed across their examples to me is a failing of their journalistic case study method, but no matter.
An interesting book, and in many ways, despite its stated intentions, a timely one.