A great look at urbanism and updated thought in archaeology. I expected to enjoy it but was happy to learn new things about these four settlements. ( )

An interesting, and thoroughly researched review of four cities that were presumed to be "lost." Two of these cities were unknown to me prior to reading this book. The author gets involved at the excavation sites and accesses the expertise of anthropologists, urban planners, architects, linguists, and of course archeol0gists. Many theories are upended with new information garnered only recently with the benefit of technology. The old theories promulgated by old, wealthy, white, European men were based on their inherent biases without regard for differing urban evolutions and with the lives of servants and slaves held in disdain. The author's goal is to find how common people lived in these cities rather than just to how the wealthy and elite lived. She succeeds, for the most part. ( )

This book is part memoir and part history. It covers the history of four ancient cities that have been deserted for centuries. The four cities are: Çatalhöyük (Turkey), Pompeii (Italy), Angkor (Cambodia), and Cahokia (US). Newitz visited each site, interviewed experts, and recounts what has been discovered, focusing on how the people lived and how the city died out.

My favorite is the first part set in Çatalhöyük. I think it is a brilliant move by the author to follow what can be gleaned of the life of a regular person. A female skeleton, named Dido by archeologists, was found at the site, along with relics of her home life. It really helps bring the history to life. Since so much time has passed, they have to speculate, but it is based on logical reasoning and the author tells us how they came to those conclusions.

The Pompeii section contains lots of information I had already known, but there are some new tidbits, such as where the people went after they evacuated in the wake of the eruption of Vesuvius. The Angkor section shows how important it is to plan a city, rather than place the water source at the whim of the person in charge. The final section portrays life in an ancient city near St. Louis. I did not know much about this site and found this section informative.

This book is filled with fascinating facts about how people lived in ancient times. Other accounts call them “lost” cities, but the author points out that they were abandoned over a period of time for a variety of reasons. If you enjoy archeology or sociology, as I do, you may want to check it out. ( )

This book examines 4 cities that eventually stopped being cities (Çatalhöyük, Ankor Wat, Pompeii, and Cahokia), and explores what the end of a city looks like: why did people leave these cities? How long did it take? Did it feel like an apocalypse, or a process of change? Obviously the answers are different for each city. In looking at the ends of these cities, Newitz also writes about current catastrophes, particularly climate catastrophes, and whether there are any useful lessons in history as modern cities face existential crises. I already knew quite a bit about some of these cities (although of course I learned more!), so I was particularly interested in thinking about the ends of modern cities, but Newitz didn't go into as much detail as I was hoping she would. Still, this is an interesting read. ( )

I would have liked this book better as a print book because I had a hard time picturing some of the structures, mainly Çatalhöyük and somewhat Angkor. The section on Cahokia was particularly strong and I think Newitz made excellent points about popular misconceptions about Native American civilization. The epilogue was possibly the most thought provoking art of the book and I immediately saw Newitz's skills with speculative fiction grounded in reality. ( )