A History of Future Cities

By Daniel Brook,

Book cover of A History of Future Cities

Book description

Hailed as an "original and fascinating book" (Times Literary Supplement), A History of Future Cities is Daniel Brook's captivating investigation of four "instant cities"-St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai-that sought to catapult themselves into the future by emulating the West.

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Why read it?

1 author picked A History of Future Cities as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Cities take a long time to make. Can you make or remake them quickly, like you make instant coffee or assemble fast food? Turns out you can… but you better be a czar or have a similar claim to authority and it may take some time for the product to mature into something worth visiting and living in. David Brook’s A History of Future Cities is one of the most informative and intriguing books on this topic. Beautifully written, the book examines four landmark cases of cities with strong utopian streaks, where powerful political regimes tried to compress time in…

From Sonia's list on time, space, and modern urbanism.

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Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

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