San Antonio College Library

"In this book John Reader reveals how cities came to be, what made them thrive, how they declined, and how they remade themselves. He debunks long-held theories and shows that the first cities actually preceded and inspired the growth of farming, that trees grow better in cities, and that even though three thousand years separated Imperial Rome from the Sumerian cities, evidence shows that their everyday lives were similar and had something in common...

Cities have existed in sub-Saharan Africa since antiquity. But only now are historians and archaeologists rediscovering their rich heritage: the ancient ruins of Great Zimbabwe and Congo, the harbor cities at the Indian Ocean, the capitals of the Bantu Kingdoms, the Atlantic cities from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and the urban revolutions in the 19th century. Mercantile cities opened Africa to the world, Islamic cities became centers of scholarship...

Journey to the heart of a great civilization in this world-spanning tour of the ancient cities of the Roman Empire. How did the Romans manage to preserve their culture while expanding so quickly? The answer lies, in part, in the cities they left behind. Leading historians reveal how the Roman practice of immediately building a city in any territory they conquered helped to control the sprawling empire for almost a thousand years.