Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Science Friday

A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history -- and figure out why people abandoned them.

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers 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.

• We started tracking this book on February 3, 2020.
• This book was £20.89 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 24 times in the past 2,008 days.
• The current price of this book is £7.49 last checked 4 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past six months.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is £6.99.
• The lowest price to date was £6.64 last reached on February 25, 2022.
• This book has been £6.64 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was £20.89 last reached on February 3, 2020.
• This book has been £20.89 one time since we started tracking it.

• Politics & Social SciencesSocial SciencesArchaeology
• Science & MathsEarth Sciences

• Publication Date: February 2, 2021
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 309 Pages
• File Size: 85 KB