This book goes through history, giving information about different cities around the world at their height. We start with Jericho and end with Tokyo. There are ancient cities that now lie in ruins, old cities that kept getting renewed and rebuilt through the centuries, and modern cities that are comparatively young.

My favorite city was Tenochtitlan, because I used to live in Mexico City and I have visited the museums and ruins of Tenochtitlan many times. It was so fun to see a map of how the ancient city would have looked, and compare it to the modern city I knew!

I loved the beautiful illustrations and maps included in this book! There are four pages for each city, giving little factoids in small paragraphs and showing the main landmarks, museums, palaces, and architecture for which that city is well-known. We also get a bit of a timeline of the city with its main history and notable personages.

There is a section on San Francisco which highlights the Castro District as "one of the first openly LBGTQ+ neighborhoods in the world". It also includes a short bio on Harvey Milk as "the first openly gay elected official in California."

There were a few places that I found very odd, where the facts seemed to be strangely skewed. There is a whole paragraph about Lenin in the section on St. Petersburg, but it only says that he was the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and that he established the Soviet state. It literally says "He is regarded as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century." Nothing about how he murdered millions of people. Very lopsided history.

There is also a section at the end about "Cities of Tomorrow" which says that "clean" energy like "sun, water, wind, or waves" would be much better than fossil fuels, but it neglects to mention any of the problems that those energy sources pose. It's just another way that the facts are lopsided and don't give the whole picture.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher/author in exchange for a free and honest review. All the opinions stated here are my own true thoughts, and are not influenced by anyone.