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From the #1 bestselling author of A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders, a wise and sweeping history of the rise of cities and the technologies, inventions, and ideas that built our modern world
For over 10,000 years, humans have been busy altering our environment and embracing change in the name of “progress,” evolving from communities of hunter-gatherers to the independent, metropolitan sophisticates that we see ourselves as today. By the early 21st century, humans had become a majority urban species for the first time. What exactly made that possible, and how did the essential infrastructure of modern life—the innovations that we barely even notice, but without which our world would fall apart—happen?
In The World As We Built It, Jonn Elledge brings his masterful wit and boundless curiosity to the topic of urbanization and the innovations that brought us here. Revealing fascinating origin stories about seemly ordinary systems and reminding us that much of the technology we take for granted was once earth-shattering, Elledge invites us to join him on a fascinating and often surprising tour of the ideas and inventions that made modernity possible.
From elevators to electric lighting, street numbering to skyscrapers, The World As We Built It guides us through the world’s ages of invention, modernization, and ultimately, the history of civilization itself.
