Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age

Annalee Newitz

Feb 2021 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Chloe Cannon

About this audiobook

In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes listeners on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, 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. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers-slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers-who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

Ratings and reviews

Good content but the reader sounds a bit contemptuous and robotic. it would be much better if the author read it instead.

Fascinating in-depth dive into our earliest cities as well as explanations on their demise. Learned a lot and enjoyed the entire book.

About the author

Annalee Newitz is a journalist and author of science fiction and nonfiction, including the national bestseller Four Lost Cities. They write for the New York Times and New Scientist and cohost the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. They live in San Francisco.

Audiobook narration seized Chloe Cannon's interest when reading aloud to local seniors, who informed her that her reading sounded "just like their audiobooks!" Since then, she has narrated titles in a variety of genres, including young adult, sci-fi/fantasy, romance, self-help, thriller/suspense, and biography.