How has the ancient Near Eastern city been "imagined and visualized, studied and reconstructed" (p. vii) over the past two hundred years? That is the question at the core of this wide-ranging book, originally published in Italian in 2013. According to Liverani, the answer should excite not only his fellow historians and archaeologists of the ancient Near East, but also many other scholars, including those studying the history of the city, the dynamics of colonialism and its aftermath, and, more generally, anyone interested in the biography of the cultural constructs called "East" and "West." To that list I would add historians of archaeology and ancient history.