Review by Choice Review
Drawing upon the inspiration of urbanists and historians, Kotkin (senior fellow, New America Foundation) attempts to define the city throughout human history and into the future. This brief, readable volume is based on a wide variety of scholarly English-language studies of world cities from the earliest times to the present. Though historical in organization, nearly half of the book is devoted to the recent past and near future. Moving beyond the city's functional aspects of politics, security, and economics, Kotkin focuses on his theme of the city as a powerful moral and spiritual ethos to explain the rise and fall of particular urban cultures. By focusing on the city's cultural and ethical dimension, Kotkin gives readers a powerful lens for understanding the lifespan of historical cities and urban cultures, and perhaps a tool to forecast the city of the future. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General and undergraduate collections. J. Rogers Louisiana State University at Alexandria
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Startlingly brief for such an ambitious title, Kotkin's evolutionary narrative is less an examination of individual urban centers than a strategic, accessible narration of urbanism in general from ancient Mesopotamia to the present. As places sacred, safe, and busy, cities rise and thrive by their ability to become and remain concentrated, effective sites of worship, security, and commerce. But, as Kotkin's gently functionalist comparative analysis shows us, cities struggle when they fail to cultivate a sense of community and common identity among their diverse inhabitants. Whether threatened by barbarians or suburbs, he continues, a city's health depends upon its ability to keep the centrifugal forces of politics and economics from dispersing its sacred urban space. A rejoinder to Guns, Germs, and Steel? Perhaps. Also a bold synthesis of urban historian Jane Jacobs and -anthropologist-theologian Mircea Eliade. Some readers may find each stop on Kotkin's whirlwind tour too brief, albeit nimbly presented. Luckily, he includes an excellent bibliography. --Brendan Driscoll Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
With this slim text, Kotkin offers his readers a history of the city from the first urban centers of the ?Fertile Crescent? in 5000, B.C., all the way to post-September 11th New York City. At the same time, Kotkin argues that three key factors distinguish successful cities: commerce, security and power, and the ?sacredness? of urban space. Such an ambitious dual project would prove daunting for any work, and this brief, occasionally terse attempt often falls short of its lofty goals. Kotkin, a senior fellow with the New American Foundation and the author of five previous books, including Tribes and The New Geography, is certainly a fine, engaging writer. His discussion of the rise of Rome as the ?first megacity? efficiently covers vast historical ground while consistently bringing that history back to his central argument. But Kotkin spends far less time analyzing contemporary megacities such as Mexico City and Sao Paulo. And in those over-hasty moments, the book reveals its wider gaps, biases and shortcomings. Kotkin?s book may serve as an accessible general introduction to the history of urban life, culture and spaces. But readers seeking the global history the text purports to offer may be better served by the ?suggested further reading? that follows this sketchy narrative. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Review by Library Journal Review
A Los Angeles-based senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC, Kotkin (The New Geography) offers a brief but thorough overview of cities in a global context. Kotkin limns the salient aspects of imperial, classical, "Oriental," Islamic, and industrial cities and dispersed suburbanized conurbations, focusing on two themes: the universality of the urban experience and the need for all successful cities to combine sacred or moral purpose, a security-providing political structure, and a commercial base centered on a viable middle class. Civilization, the author argues, is inextricably linked to life in cities, entrepots for both material goods and ideas. Whether in Mesoamerica, in Mesopotamia, or along the Mediterranean, municipalities have flourished as places of relative tolerance and creative energy. Kotkin cites the alarming "deurbanization" of some late 20th-century American metropolises, where rising crime rates caused residents to flee, an instance that echoes the evacuations of late classical times. Seasoned with quotations from contemporary observers and buttressed by endnotes, this lyrically written reflection is recommended for all libraries.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In gentle rebuke to those who never saw the good side of a city, urbanist and commentator Kotkin (The New Geography, 2000, etc.) looks at the bright side, calling cities "humankind's greatest creation." Cities concentrate not just people but also energy, talent, and wealth. Kotkin adds to these the element of sacredness: Ancient cities, he observes, were dominated by religious structures, suggesting "that the city was also a sacred place, connected directly to divine forces controlling the world." Accidents of geography and history dictate how cities will rise, flourish and fall. Interestingly, Kotkin ventures that monoculture is one recipe for collapse. Carthage, he writes, was a mere commercial center, though it began with all the cultural values of its Phoenician ancestors; absent "any broader sense of mission or rationale for expansion other than profit," it fell under the weight of unenlightened self-interest. Readers will remember that Rome had a hand in Carthage's end, and Kotkin does a fine job of showing how the Romans instilled civic virtues and engineered their way to greatness in their own metropolis. Carthage's example looms as Kotkin turns up other instances of cities done in by greed, such as Athens and Constantinople. Even Amsterdam of the Golden Age might have benefited, he suggests, from some of Elizabethan London's drive toward the "democratization of culture" and, he adds, some of its moral fiber: Otherwise the Dutch might have fought a little harder to hold on to New York, soon to become a city of world importance. Artificial cities like the ones the Nazis planned usually don't work, Kotkin notes, but more-or-less planned cities such as Pudong and Abuja are springing up everywhere, changing the face of the developing world. Kotkin closes his already useful, literate essay by pondering the future of the urban order, with the hope that the Islamic world, "having found Western values wanting, may find in its own glorious past . . . the means to salvage its troubled urban civilization." A thoughtful survey, of interest to students of urban affairs and of world history alike. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
