Metropolis: Mapping the City

Trade and religion are some of our oldest practices, says Black (history, Univ. of Exeter; senior fellow, Ctr. for the Study of America and the West, Foreign Policy Research Inst.; Armageddon: From The Great War to the Fall of France, 1918–40), and maps evolved to describe the cities that grew around those activities. The more than 150 maps he includes depict places from the earliest cities—the first, for example, which is surprisingly recognizable as a map, is of the city of Nippur, in what is now Iraq, in around 1250 BCE—to modern metropolises all over the world. What we traditionally think of as maps are complemented by imaginary views of street- and skyscapes of today's cities as imagined in the past. The map color, lines, drawings, and other symbols are clearly reproduced, but readers will often wish that the reproductions were larger, as some of the entries are very detailed. Textual information is a strength in this work; the maps and other illustrations are accompanied by voluminous background information and sidebars describing history and culture of the relevant place as well as cartographic tidbits.