Cities of the World: A History in Maps Peter Whitfield The history of the city is the history of man himself, with all his contradictions: magnificent and squalid, noble and irrational, creative and self-destructive. The city has been the focus of civilization, the fountainhead of ideas and the great energy-source of human history, but it has also been a place of warfare, disease, ugliness and broken ideals. For countless centuries the city has drawn people to it, in search of wealth and power, new identities or new achievements, and today the world's tourists flock to Paris, Florence, Jerusalem, Boston or St. Petersburg seeking the special magic which lies waiting in the stones, the streets, the monuments and the collective memory of each metropolis. Cities of the World is a highly original book, which holds up a mirror to some of the world's greatest cities, and traces their historic form and special character through some of the maps and panoramic views produced of them over the centuries. Illustrating the classical city-state, the medieval fortress, the baroque capital and the industrial metropolis, the images show how the architectural form and the social life of our cities have been shaped - not only by their geographical setting, but also by religion, royal power, commerce, social ideals, and occasionally artistic vision. Cities of the World is a journey via maps, exploring man's perennial love-hate relationship with his finest, most complex and troubling creation, the city. Peter Whitfield is an independent scholar and a leading expert in map history and exploration. He is a former director of Stanford's International Map Centre in London and now runs his own company publishing facsimiles of historic maps. His previous books by the British Library are The Image of the World (1994), The Mapping of the Heavens (1995), The Charting of the Oceans (1996), New Found Lands (1998), Landmarks in Western Science (1999), Astrology: a History (2001) and Sir Francis Drake (2004). Other published titles include Grassic Gibbon and his World (Aberdeen Journals, 1994), The History of Science (10 volumes, Grolier, 2003) and The Mapmakers: a History of Stanfords (Edward Stanford, 2003).