The Life and Death of Ancient Cities

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 512
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780191641824
ISBN-13 : 0191641820
Rating : 4/5 (24 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Life and Death of Ancient Cities by : Greg Woolf

Download or read book The Life and Death of Ancient Cities written by Greg Woolf and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-17 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human race is on a 10,000 year urban adventure. Our ancestors wandered the planet or lived scattered in villages, yet by the end of this century almost all of us will live in cities. But that journey has not been a smooth one and urban civilizations have risen and fallen many times in history. The ruins of many of them still enchant us. This book tells the story of the rise and fall of ancient cities from the end of the Bronze Age to the beginning of the Middle Ages. It is a tale of war and politics, pestilence and famine, triumph and tragedy, by turns both fabulous and squalid. Its focus is on the ancient Mediterranean: Greeks and Romans at the centre, but Phoenicians and Etruscans, Persians, Gauls, and Egyptians all play a part. The story begins with the Greek discovery of much more ancient urban civilizations in Egypt and the Near East, and charts the gradual spread of urbanism to the Atlantic and then the North Sea in the centuries that followed. The ancient Mediterranean, where our story begins, was a harsh environment for urbanism. So how were cities first created, and then sustained for so long, in these apparently unpromising surroundings? How did they feed themselves, where did they find water and building materials, and what did they do with their waste and their dead? Why, in the end, did their rulers give up on them? And what it was like to inhabit urban worlds so unlike our own - cities plunged into darkness every night, cities dominated by the temples of the gods, cities of farmers, cities of slaves, cities of soldiers. Ultimately, the chief characters in the story are the cities themselves. Athens and Sparta, Persepolis and Carthage, Rome and Alexandria: cities that formed great families. Their story encompasses the history of the generations of people who built and inhabited them, whose short lives left behind monuments that have inspired city builders ever since - and whose ruins stand as stark reminders to the 21st century of the perils as well as the potential rewards of an urban existence.


The Life and Death of Ancient Cities Related Books

The Life and Death of Ancient Cities
Language: en
Pages: 512
Authors: Greg Woolf
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-07-17 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The human race is on a 10,000 year urban adventure. Our ancestors wandered the planet or lived scattered in villages, yet by the end of this century almost all
The American City
Language: en
Pages: 890
Authors: Arthur Hastings Grant
Categories: Cities and towns
Type: BOOK - Published: 1925 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Dynamics of Cities
Language: en
Pages: 414
Authors: Dimitrios Dendrinos
Categories: Architecture
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-09-26 - Publisher: Routledge

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing on recorded evidence, this book argues that simple, general and powerful macrodynamic processes guide the growth and decline of present day urban agglom
The Living City
Language: en
Pages: 452
Authors: Roberta Brandes Gratz
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1995-07-19 - Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

THE LIVING CITY "An intelligent analysis. Sensible, undoctrinaire, evengood-humored. An appealing mixture of passion and clinicaldispassion." -Washington Post B
A Description of the Province and City of New York
Language: en
Pages: 174
Authors: John Miller
Categories: New York (State)
Type: BOOK - Published: 1862 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK