5 Cities That Ruled The World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London & New York Shaped Global History (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
I consider myself an intelligent person who can read informative texts and still gather inspiration and find enjoyment, but this book was more dry and boring than the text books I read in high school. Which is a shame because there is such potential. I wanted to enjoy it and wanted to learn but the message was lost behind the writing style ... And my eventual snores. I rarely set a book aside but after trudging through three of the five cities I decided I deserve to read something I enjoy. I'd still like to know the main points of this book so will have to discuss with someone who has more dense reading stamina than I do. This book had tremendous amounts of promise, based on the premise. The trouble is, it only occasionally meandered across the premise.It read much more as a history of the Christian religion than any of these five cities. While, for Jerusalem and Rome that might have made sense, it didn't for Athens, London, and New York.London was a greater mess than all the rest -- it went PAGES without even mentioning the city, going through a haphazard history of England that focused on religion and not the rise of the British empire (which would at least have been more relevant to London). Although the author asserts that literature is London's main contribution as a city, only a fraction of the section was devoted to it. No references to the Bloomsbury group, nothing on themes like pastoral vs. town. Terrible.But the whole thing was poorly written and had some of the worst flow of any book I've ever read, and so pro-Christian it loses any semblance of a non-biased history book, with such gems as this passage from the epilogue:"When people as God for their daily bread, as He instructs in His Word, and as He liberally gives to them accordingly, they should also thank Him for the role of that particular city."
What do You think about 5 Cities That Ruled The World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London & New York Shaped Global History (2009)?
So many questions answered by reading this book. It was like reading an archeological dig.
—Choco1202
need more like this that help put history in perspective
—milsanz
