Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age; Annalee Newitz

Four Lost Cities is top-notch pop-science reporting -- it provides a great start for someone to dip their toe into an area of knowledge to determine their interest, and then go further if there's a spark.  I learned something new (and in most cases, quite a lot) that I didn't know before about each of the cities: Çatalhöyük, Pompeii, Angkor, and Cahokia.

One of the things Newitz tries to do, and I think succeeds at, is to differentiate for the reader what is known versus what is theorized and contested about each site, and what are the basic arguments for each opinion.  

The central thesis is that none of these cities were truly "lost", and all cities go through natural cycles of growth and abandonment.  I liked that Newitz applied her own personal experience with a (very brief) abandonment and regrowth cycle in San Francisco, and can't help but think about places like Buffalo and St. Louis, which haven't recovered (yet); Pittsburgh, which shrank as steel left and decades later recovered as a tech hub; Burlington, VT, which continually hemorrhages its youth to larger and higher-income cities, but maintains a steady state through immigration (both people from wealthier states looking for a smaller city, and international immigrants).  Newitz briefly mentions New Orleans and Detroit, and writes of how some research of modern urban areas can be applied to archaeological work; it feels like this is an area ripe for follow-up.

Four Lost Butterfingers has joined Future of Another Butterfinger in my camera roll