Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Books about Cities

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Books about Cities

    Peter Ackroyd has written great books on London and Venice

    Mike Davis, City of Quartz, on LA, is a gem.

    Elijah Anderson, The Cosmopolitan Canopy, on race in Philadelphia, is an accessible work of urban Sociology.

    Wendell Pierce has written a book on New Orleans but I have not yet read it.

    George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London. A very dark work and somewhat misanthropic, as his politics had not yet matured.

    #2
    Joseph Brodsky, Watermarks, about Venice
    London's Overthrow - China Miéville Which handily enough is online

    These are more about the spirit than history.

    On my, very long, buy list is City of Lions. Which has an essay by Józef Wittlin about Lwów and one, more recent, by Philippe Sands about Lviv.

    Comment


      #3
      Wittlin wrote some important poems on the Holocaust so I would expect his essay to be beautifully written.

      http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/arti.../Wittlin_Jozef

      Comment


        #4
        As I said on the thread that snuck into Football:

        Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris is a wonderful book.

        Peter Aykroyd's London is too long.

        Comment


          #5
          Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore was a good read. Some non-mainstream interpretations of fairly well researched periods (like around 30AD). But I felt like I learned a lot about other periods particularly the Crusader Kingdoms.

          Comment


            #6
            Jerusalem the Biography - Simon Sebag Montefiore
            City of Thorns - Ben Rawlence's account of daily life inside Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya

            Comment


              #7
              Balls.....


              Soz

              Comment


                #8
                Fiction: The City & The City, China Mieville, a Chandleresque murder mystery set in the Eastern European cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma, which occupy the same geographical space, but "via the volition of their citizens ... are perceived as two different cities."

                Biography or social history: Imaginary Cities, Darran Anderson

                One of my favourite reads of recent years, a trawl through the politics and culture of imaginary cities. Can't recommend this highly enough.
                Last edited by Crusoe; 21-07-2017, 06:54.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Philip Mansel on Constantinople is rather good imho. He's also written a book on Aleppo which I've not read.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    The City & The City looks fascinating, Crusoe. And I got quite a shock when I clicked through to China Miéville's Wiki page and saw a photo of the author, who I had always assumed - never having read any of their work or previously seen a picture of them - was a woman of African or Asian origin. Same thing happened quite recently when I saw a picture of Lionel Schriver for the first time (although in my defence, I now read that it's not her birth name and she deliberately changed her name to a boy's name because she was a tomboy as a child).

                    A good number of Jorge Luis Borges' stories fit the bill here for Buenos Aires, particularly his early stuff. As does The Tango Singer by Tomás Eloy Martínez, which I highly recommend.

                    I also want to put forward Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, but given that a) I've never been to New York and b) I managed to thoroughly enjoy the book(s) without having a fucking clue what was happening for most of their duration, there might be other posters who are better placed to comment on its suitability.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      It's worth a read, Sam. I had the same thing with Shriver as well.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        I really want to read The City & The City now. Sounds fantastic. And I;ve enjoyed what little I have read of Mieville's work. (I had the same reaction as Sam the first time I saw him though, and the Schriver thing too. And Meredith Belbin)

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Glad it's not just me, I felt quite racist/sexist for a moment. I assume 'China' is pronounced like the country, then. Until last night I'd always said it 'Sheena' in my head.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Madness Under The Royal Palms by Laurence Leamer is very good on the seedy decadence of Palm Beach, FL.

                            Comment

                            Working...
                            X