Five Cities That Ruled The World By Douglas Wilson | a review

{full disclosure: To comply with federal regulations, I want to state that I received this book in return for my review. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.}

Men live in communities; men have always lived their lives together. Throughout the ages you can look at those collections of people called cities to see the majority of what we would call history. Cities are the collectors of everything that is good & bad within man, only magnified.

5 specific cities are the focus of Douglas Wilson’s book Five Cities That Ruled The World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and New York Shaped Global History. As the title clearly describes, he examines these cities to show what made them great. A very promising idea. These cities are all very interesting subjects in their own right, making for a compelling story line for this historical sketch.

With the promising subject matter, I feel that the author failed in the execution. Let me be blunt and say I was rather appalled at this book. I’ll outline a few of the reasons to explain.

1) He spends much of the pages with typical historical data, the history of the city (and their respective nations) through military battles and the eyes of nobility. Instead of spending the majority of the focus on what made this city different than any other, he spends it describing the rise and fall. That description fails because it lacks much of the why. Instead of explaining at length the rise of the Greek people, I was hoping to see what & why were the conditions that such original art & philosophy would explode from.

2) His bias towards free market capitalism is remarkable and unrestrained within his pages on New York City. NYC’s contribution is that of commerce. Sadly he continually speaks of NYC ability to create goods instead contrasted to Rome’s economy built on conquering others. The huge problem with this, is the lack of acknowledgment that NYC doesn’t really produce anything except trading things. Sadly the United States as a whole has exported the whole of the manufacturing industry to other countries; this isn’t something he acknowledges in the least. In his clearly pro-American position he fails to acknowledge the looming doom for America. China is quickly emerging not only a competitor but the successor.

3) He has some crazy ideas about history, not being a historian I can’t directly refute them but they seem crazy. One example, while discussing Jerusalem, he speaks of his belief that nations were crossing the Atlantic with trading posts in South America during the time of King David & Solomon. The advanced culture that we find in the Aztecs and others is a result of a nation leaving settlers there and not being able to return for them because the nation was defeated at home.