Many thanks to NetGalley for the chance to read this wonderful work. How original! This is a terrifically written account of 4 ancient cities and the rise & fall. The subject was new to me and I learned a tremendous amount from this author. I admire the writing, the scholarship, and the story-telling. Highly recommend this.

I really enjoyed this exploration of four cities that were once thriving, but did not survive to the present day. The archaeological record shows us how they lived and why they might have declined--and what that means for cities that may vanish someday soon.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

What does the phrase "lost cities" conjure in your mind? Does Indian Jones hacking through the jungle only to stumble upon a vine covered ruin come to mind? Or does careful excavation of mounds of dirt in the Middle East trigger your interest? In Four Lost Cities, the reader gets to travel to three continents and participate in examining four urban centers and try to figure out what was going on before people walked away from these hubs of civilization.

Annalee Newitz opens with Catalhoyuk (Turkey), one of the earliest urban centers in the world. After about a thousand years, the city was abandoned, gradually. Her next stop is Pompeii (Italy) where a volcanic eruption put an end to a city in the midst of urban renewal. The third stop is Angkor Wat (Cambodia) where expansionism and poor engineering led to the dwindling of the city into villages. The final stop is Cahokia (United States) where the Mississippian culture flourished, built pyramids, and then pulled up stakes and left. While visiting each city, Newitz concentrates on how the typical city dweller lived in each city. Another of her focuses is on what attracted folk to the city and what eventually led them away.

Four Lost Cities is a bit of a misnomer as Newitz points out in her introduction. People living around each of these cities knew about them even if the European elites did not. Then there is "a secret history" phrase in the subtitle! Newitz is using this term to stoke interest in looking not at the monuments found in these locations, but rather at the ordinary lives of the citizens. If you enjoy learning about ancient civilizations, you are likely to enjoy this title.

This kept coming up on my timeline and I thought I'd better get on it because a) they were saying great things and b) I've had an earc since forever ago and now I feel guilty about it, BUT. Here we go.

This was a fantastic read, a deeply human look at our messy, storied, complicated history with living and dying together as humans, whether in the city or in other ways. The way Newitz explores the history of each of these four cities was just beautiful, and I loved how many different people were interviewed.

It was so easy to read, too, very accessible writing style. I'd definitely revisit because there's so much info and it's all so interesting! Definitely one of my favorite non-fiction books of the year.

A big sign I love a book is when I can't quit talking about it to my boyfriend (hi Michael, love you lol), and this one has hit that mark quite a few times since I read it two months ago. I really loved Newitz's writing style, and thought it added to the book (which is sometimes hard to do with science focused books!) - their writing really helped me delve into each city they discussed, and I learned *so* much about ancient civilizations, how civilizations form and erode, and how they don't truly *die* like we're taught to believe, but instead slowly grow smaller or evolve into other versions of themselves. Loved how they brought climate change into most of these stories, even though it definitely felt like a warning for our current times! Can't wait to read a few more of their books I have on my bookshelf.

Four Lost Cities is the first nonfiction book I've read by one of my favourite science fiction writers, Annalee Newitz. An experienced journalist, Newitz travels to four archaeological sites to explore what the cities that once stood there were like and how their citizens lived. This is very much focused on common people, providing a fresh perspective in a genre that is too often dominated by the lives of kings and merchants. Newitz interviews archaeologists and anthropologists, seeking insights into what it would have been like for the majority living in the cities. I was especially fascinated by the developing technologies used in rebuilding abandoned cities, learning about thoroughfares by the degradation of curbs and the diets of people who lived there. I was enthralled by the pictures the author paints, I felt like I was in Pompeii watching people live their lives.

Newitz approaches cities from a fresh perspective that I found very engaging. The book is optimistic, a great treat in the study of lost cities. I was pleasantly surprised to find real hope here, Newitz highlighting the actual process of cities failing. They explicitly argue against the collapse hypothesis put forward by Jared Diamond that casts the decline of cities as cataclysms that were runious. Instead the reader finds stories of mutual aid, democratisation of land, and beautiful cultural legacies. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the diverse ways humans have found to live in our time on this planet or anyone who is looking for some hope in our current situation. I will definitely be picking up other non-fiction by Newitz.

Coming from Newitz, this book was somewhat unexpected. I've read their two previous sci-fi offerings and enjoyed them. This was very well researched and not boring (which is saying a lot for nonfiction of this type).

An easy to read, captivating history of four urban centers of human population. This is more a survey than a deep dive into the subject, and is a very interesting, quick read.

Four Lost Cities explores four cities around the globe and save for one vignette it is a is a full-bodied descriptive narrative that includes just enough storytelling to keep the reader engaged. It is a fascinating read without being fawning and keeps the science approachable for all types of readers. The pace lags a bit in the second vignette and the transitions can be a bit dull, The epilogue is the tiniest bit preachy and a punchier title would be helpful. Nonetheless, this should be required reading for any city manager.

Modern cities seem like a permanent fixture, you can't imagine a world without London, Paris, Rome or New York so thinking that there are cities that are lost is hard to wrap your mind around. Annalee Newitz's new book Four Lost Cities picks, you guessed it, four cities that are no longer and tells the tales of these cities and the people who inhabited them. The four cities, Çatalhöyük in Turkey, Pompeii in Italy, Angkor in Cambodia and Cahokia in Illinois all had there heyday in very different times and places but as Newitz explores these cities and talks with the archeologists who work in these cities there are often common issues that lead to their eventual abandonment. Newitz and the archaeologists who she speaks to often focuses on the everyday inhabitants of the city and the reasons why people move from rural/nomadic live into cities and less on the kings and higher ranked individuals who call the city home. Newitz's writing style is very accessible and she touched on two cities I had never heard of (Çatalhöyük and Cahokia). I really enjoyed this book and look forward to more non-fiction writing from the author.

Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz is a highly recommended entertaining and informative look at four cities from history that were abandoned. Everyone loves a good lost city story, but these cities weren't actually lost, people knew they existed, but they were deserted.

Newitz writes: "Modern metropolises are by no means destined to live forever, and historical evidence shows that people have chosen to abandon them repeatedly over the past eight thousand years. It’s terrifying to realize that most of humanity lives in places that are destined to die. The myth of the lost city obscures the reality of how people destroy their civilizations. This book is about that reality, which we’ll explore in four of the most spectacular examples of urban abandonment in human history." The four ancient cities examined are Çatalhöyük, Pompeii, Angkor, and Cahokia.

Çatalhöyük is a Neolithic site buried beneath two low hills in the Anatolian region of Central Turkey that was founded around 9,000 years ago. People here were settling down into agricultural life after living as nomads. The population was probably between 5,000 and 20,000 for about a millennium. Pompeii is the most well known city. It was a Roman tourist town on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean until the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 and buried the city under a deep layer of volcanic ash. The medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia experienced a slow-motion abandonment and destruction as the city was hit by climate catastrophes lasting a century. The indigenous metropolis Cahokia was the largest city in North America before the arrival of Europeans. It grew from a small village located on the Mississippi River bottom where East St. Louis is today to a sprawling metropolis of over 30,000 people and covered both sides of the river. The many groups of people who composed this city and shared spiritual practices eventually experienced several droughts which changed their practices, and they divided back into their individual groups and left.

Four Lost Cities is written in a very accessible manner, so even the layperson who is interested in archaeology but hardly a scholar, can easily understand the information Newitz presents. They traveled to all four sites and talked to many of the researchers and scientists studying the sites and they share the new, cutting edge theories and interpretations of what life was like in the cities, before, during and after their decline. And that is the really interesting fact - these cities experienced a slow decline, with the obvious exception of Pompeii, that occurred over decades or longer. People chose to leave the cities, and for good reasons. Each of the cities encountered lengthy periods of political instability joined with major environmental problems.

Personally I found Newitz's focus on the everyday people that built and populated these cities and their functions in that particular society fascinating. It is also refreshing to see the new archaeological focus on how each society likely function rather than observing it through the lens of Western Civilization. All of the observations shared are well-researched. They talked to the experts currently involved with the sites and information is included in chapter notes if you would like to pursue more information.

My review copy was courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company via Netgalley.
After publication the review will be posted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Four cities from throughout human history spread across the world - who were the people who lived there? What was it about these places that attracted people and why did they end up leaving?
If you have an interest in human history and archaeology but don't have much in-depth knowledge or want anything too academic or dense then this is certainly worth a try. The style is more like a newspaper long-read and, although there is some basic archaeological information, there is a lot of speculation about the motives of people who occupied and then deserted these cities. Were their choices political, religious, purely practical? What must they have been thinking and feeling? I should say that this speculation seems to largely come from the experts and specialists that the author meets & speaks with and isn't just their own imagination.
I learnt quite a bit, even about Pompeii which is probably the most well-known of the four cities, and I'll certainly now look for more reading about the other cities covered. I also liked that the author spent the time discussing why these cities have never really been "lost" because the people and cultures still survive elsewhere or because the local population still knew the location but finding a "lost" city gave notoriety to the western colonial explorers/forces.
Personally, I didn't find the style for me - I felt it wandered away from a point to circle back around later or to mention similar things again. I think some photos or sketches may have helped focus the stories being told.

I first picked up this book because I really enjoyed Annalee Newitz’s 2019 book called The Future of Another Timeline. Since I enjoyed their fiction writing, I was hoping that their newest nonfiction book would be equally entertaining and enjoyable. Luckily, I was correct! This book was a great read and very informative about the history of civilizations of which I had very little prior knowledge. It is easy for a book packed with this much information to be dry and boring, getting lost in the details, but it read like prose. I learned a lot but was still entertained and interested.

Newitz mentions in the book that they started researching this book seven years ago. They had tended to write about the present or future of cities, but a sudden life change made them want to investigate the past a bit closer. Newitz debunks and challenges the idea of the “lost city” in this book by explaining the term’s history and its interaction with the colonization of the countries where they are located. There are four “lost” cities profiled in this book: Çatalhüyük (a Neolithic city in Turkey), Pompeii (Roman resort town in Italy), Angkor (giant Medieval city in Cambodia), and Cahokia (Indigenous city on the Mississippi River). Newitz talks to a ton of experts (archaeologists, anthropologists, historians) on each city/population in this book. It was fascinating for me to read about how these professionals can learn about the lives of individuals living thousands of years ago by studying ruins, artifacts, and topography.

The chapters of the book that I liked the best were the ones about Angkor in Cambodia. The metropolis’ demise was attributed to political instability meeting extreme climate change. Does that sound familiar? I liked that this chapter went into more detail about the social and political issues that may have happened in the city during its life and that caused its gradual death. It was interesting to read about the class dynamics of Angkor because it was written in an engaging way. Each section did talk some about social and political issues in the cities, but Angkor’s was the most eye-opening to me personally.

There is so much more to say about this book, but for the sake of brevity, it was great – there was not a bad part of this book. Four Cities is an ancient history book for people who are not necessarily academics but want to learn about the past. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in ancient history, travel, politics and social structures, and architecture.

I'm about 60% through with the book and I absolutely love it. I love Newitz's voice in telling us the story of the cities and also the common people of each city. The section on Pompeii was a blast to read (no pun intended). I really appreciate looking at the very real humans who lived in these cities as well as the very real humans who are now studying them and trying to learn more about them. It's a great, fun read and moves along at a great pace.

A rich, heavily textured book. The first section, on the Neolithic Çatalhöyük, was particularly interesting to me: what archaeology and anthropology reveal about the way people lived when they first began to live together in a settled way. The details of the burials - keeping dead family close, under your floor - moved me and have stayed with me, although I read this book several months ago. It opened a door into a vanished time and a vanished way of life. Angkor, too, was particularly well-handled and described here. This is an excellent book: the granular detail of scientific discovery is specific but never dry, and without ever taking her feet from the ground or launching into unearned flights of fancy, Newitz manages to show us a great deal about both what was commonly thought about these civilisations, what is now known, and how we know what we know; the process and evidence through which we have learned what life was like in them, and how they came to be. They come back to life.

We all would’ve learnt about ancient civilisations in history. But what do we really know about them? Why did people abandon those sophisticated civilisations? These may be questions for archeologists, but as a history seeker I’ve always had these questions in mind.

The Four Lost Cities - we follow the exploration of four ancient forgotten civilisations along with the author Annalee Newitz. Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

With fascinating details, archeological insights and rich cultural background, this is how ancient history should be written. Anyone who is interested in history would like this book. The author is a cohost of Hugo award winning podcast Our Opinions are correct! She is the author of Future of another timeline that will interest time travel enthusiast and scifi lovers alike!!

Thank you Netgalley & publisher for the eARC in exchange for an honest opinion!

THIS is how history should be taught (at least in part)! Immerse yourself in cities, learn the good and bad about them, and understand our own cities/civilizations better in the process.

Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I do love a lost city...although as Newitz is quick to highlight, some of these cities are far from lost.

Newitz explores four cities, Pompeii, Angkor Wat and the less known Cahokia and Çatalhöyük. What I really enjoyed in this book was Newitz’s writing style. They managed to straddle the line between being intellectually stimulating and engaging enough for the layman reader to enjoy.

The book follows a simple format, exploring each city in turn. Newitz discusses the history, society and the eventual downfall of each of these lost cities.

I thought the strongest chapters were the Çatalhöyük and Pompeii chapters although I'm conscious that perhaps my personal interest may have coloured this. I really enjoyed the author’s own reflections and thoughts as they explored these cities which elevated it from what might have been quite dry in some parts. The author’s background as a journalist was clear and I think their style really worked in this book. I also liked the parts about the innovative technologies used in modern archaeology and the way in which they can enhance our understanding of these ancient cultures.

I thought out of all the chapters the Angkor Wat chapter was perhaps the weakest. There was a lot of discussion of political machinations and chat about water management features and I just found it all a bit boring. Sorry Cambodia.

Newitz also explores themes of cultural resilience and touches upon the future challenges humanity is likely to face with regards to issues such as climate change and increasing urbanisation. By discussing how other cultures in the past have survived and adjusted to a new normal we can see that these peoples and cultures were never really “lost”. This is a note of hope in the doom and gloom of the current discourse surrounding humanities chances of future survival.

FOUR LOST CITIES by Annalee Newitz is subtitled "A Secret History of the Urban Age" and deals with the history of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, Pompeii in Italy, Angkor in Cambodia, and Cahokia, near the Mississippi in the heartland of the United States. I originally requested this text because our freshmen students look at history thematically and one of the units they explore is cities and their development. Since Newitz discusses these ancient time periods and the archeological feats which were used to help describe daily life and to chart the growth and decline of cities, I though this text might be of interest to those teachers, especially. Unfortunately, however, my digital access expired early so I am giving FOUR LOST CITIES a neutral rating of 3.

This was a fascinating portrait of four abandoned cities in history. Newitz brought a new perspective focusing on the everyday lives of the non-elite. I especially enjoyed the portrayal of Pompei. However the last section on Cahokia got a little bogged down in PC viewpoints for my taste and a takedown on Jared Diamond was a little unexpected