Cities of the World: A History in Maps

by Peter Whitfield

Book Overview

Condensing centuries of history into one volume, Cities of the World traces the historic form and special character of the world's greatest cities through a breathtaking collection of maps and panoramic views. Peter Whitfield focuses on more than sixty cities--from Athens to Brasilia, Washington to Moscow, San Francisco to Saigon, and Venice to Lhasa. He presents an extremely wide range of maps, historic prints, and photographs from many periods...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520247256
• ISBN13: 9780520247253
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 3.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 9.5" x 12.6"

Customer Reviews

Substantial

This book is suitable for a coffee table, but also could be considered a college planning course text book. As a geographer, I found this book intriging and filled with information about the development of cities, as well as many maps, both modern and historic.

A Unique Way to Show History

The author has collected some 150 maps from the history of about sixty cities from around the world. I expected these maps to be beautiful works of art, but I didn't expect that the differences in the maps would show much more than that. The nature of the maps seem to show a lot about how the map maker viewed the city. The maps date from several hundred years ago when map makers were not all using Mercator projection in a more or less standard fashion. Here are maps of many styles. Some show the roads of a city, some show the fortifications, some are more concerned with making a pictorial representation of the city. ==As the subtitle of the book says, here in only a few pages the history of the city can be seen. The cities grow, and the view of the city changes with the will and skill of the map maker. This book gives me a completely different view of maps and what they can show. Highly recommended.