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Cities that Shaped the Ancient World Paperback – September 13, 2022

by John Julius Norwich (Editor)

4.0 38 ratings

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John Julius Norwich presents a sweeping tour of forty great cities that shaped the ancient world and its civilizations―and which in turn have shaped our own.

The cities of the ancient world built the foundations for modern urban life, their innovations in architecture and politics essential to cities as we know them today. But what was it like to live in Babylon, Carthage, or Teotihuacan?

From the first cities in Mesopotamia to the spectacular urban monuments of the Maya in Central America, the cities explored in Cities That Shaped the Ancient World represent almost three millennia of human history. Not only do they illustrate the highest achievement of the cultures that built them, but they also help us understand the rise and fall of these ancient peoples. In this new compact paperback, eminent historians and archaeologists with first-hand knowledge of each site give voice to these silent ruins, bringing them to life as the teeming, state-of-the-art metropolises they once were.

23

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gorgeous . . . a pleasure to peruse. "
― Minerva

"Informative and thought-provoking. "
― EDP Weekend

About the Author

John Julius Norwich was the author of more than twenty books, including the New York Times bestseller Absolute Monarchs and The Great Cities in History. He began his career in the British foreign service, but resigned his diplomatic post to become a writer. He was a chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund and the honorary chairman of the World Monuments Fund. John Julius Norwich died in 2018.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thames & Hudson (September 13, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0500293406
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0500293409
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,073,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,199 in Sociology of Urban Areas
- #1,698 in History of Civilization & Culture
- #4,277 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.0 38 ratings

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Judith Martin

Cities that Shaped the Ancient World -- A Gazetteer

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2014

Verified Purchase

Lush. Gorgeous. A book that brings everything up to date. A handy gazetteer to inspire further research, or simply to answer a few basic questions.

8 people found this helpful

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Critical Mass

A GOOD RETREAD

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

A fine survey of ancient cities except for the fact that it is almost a complete reprint (with different type and illustrations) of an earlier book also edited by J.J. Norwich titled "Great Cities in History". The individual chapters are compact and informative but way too brief. This is basically a surface survey buttressed by beautiful color photography.

7 people found this helpful

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dmryan7

Not by John Julius Norwich, not much depth by those who actually wrote it.

Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

First of all, this is NOT by John Julius Norwich!

We have read several of his wonderful books and looked forward to another of them. However ...

It is a collection of short, and I am sorry to have to say, somewhat shallow essays by disparate professionals of various levels of writing ability, each too short to do justice to its subject.

We did not finish reading it.

This was faudulent advertising. We wish we had our money back.

11 people found this helpful

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Michael Lewyn

ok i guess

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2023

This book is a set of short essays (averaging five pages each) about ancient cities. Each essay contains a description of a city's geography, and sometimes a bit of religious or political history as well. To me, the essays had sort of a "laundry list" quality- I did not find them that interesting.

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2014

I wish that I hadn’t bought this book. I was enticed by the fact that John Julius Norwich is credited as the editor.

Almost all of the two page essays are written by academics with archaeological experience of the sites. Only two of the 30 contributors fall into the “as seen on television” category. One of whom is Bettany Hughes.

Bettany Hughes’s essays on Troy, Mycenae and Athens read like something lifted from a television documentary. Award-winning historical novelist she may be but somewhat out of class amongst the other contributors.

Nearly all of the photographs have been sourced from photo archive libraries and so have been previously published elsewhere. Most are good, none outstanding, and some so mediocre that they wouldn’t pass muster for a pocket tourist guide. There are no city plans.

Printed and bound in China with the pages sewn together in quires as one would expect from Thames & Hudson.

I bought the book from The Book Depository (which is owned by Amazon).

Some, once having tasted, may be encouraged to drink more deeply.

30 people found this helpful

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Language5

Fascinating, with caveats

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2022

A fascinating and thorough look at ancient cities from around the world. In a series of vignettes, each written by a different author, the book explores the foundation, architecture, culture and more from the oldest cities known to humanity.

A couple things I didn't like, thus the three stars:

1. Each story varies in quality, and some get bogged down in details
2. The Asia and Americas stories mostly feel like these are "less important" than the ancient cities of say, the Middle East. And many particularly in the Americas have not yet been explored or excavated as the other ones. Discrimination, not sure, but at least a weird disinterest.

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Mr Sparkle

What a cruel joke to play on people who actually are seeking to learn!

Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2016

This book provides a very basic overview of a few cities that shaped the ancient world. However, their selection is quite biased. In
Asia, the only ones who apparently matter are in China and India. In the Middle East, we have an article on Babylon written by Joan Oates which qualifies as amateurish, at best. Apparently, she felt it appropriate to cite the Bible in her introduction, while quickly demonstrating that this is a source with which she is FAR from familiar with. In Europe, only the Classical civilizations deserve any mention, and the same is true for Africa, 95% of which goes unrepresented! We've grown to hold Mr. Norwich in high esteem, but it appears that he's sourced out the actual work and research for the book to undergrads. We present Rome, but only through the EXTREMELY myopic lens of the city under the rule of Augustus...nothing before or after his rule, apparently, deserves mention! We have Athens, but ONLY Athens in the Golden Age.

Lastly, it seems as though the editor went out of his way to enlist a group of "conspirators", who clearly know nothing about Christian theology or history, to espouse separate but equally ignorant views about this religion, as if to intentionally seek out an opportunity to insult people of faith and to misrepresent all of history in that regard as something it very much isn't. One example of this was equating Ephesus's recognition of Mary with that same city's previous WORSHIP of Artemis, saying that they "replaced the worship of one goddess with that of another". And that's just plain ignorant! It espouses the author's (in this case, Stephen Mitchell, but equal blame falls on Norwich!) ignorance as a portrayal of historical fact, and detracts from the whole. The same is true of this book's treatment of Jerusalem, Nineveh, and Babylon. It is difficult to be a rational Christian and make it through this book without being insulted. Because that seems to have been the author's intent, to insult people of faith. If we are willing to accept facts in lieu of legend, we certainly expect supposedly "educated" authors to do better than to GUESS at what it is we believe in!

4 people found this helpful

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