Autoren-Bilder

Daniel Brook

Autor von A History of Future Cities

3 Werke 279 Mitglieder 4 Rezensionen

Über den Autor

Daniel Brook is the author of The Trap and a jounalist whose work has appeared in publications including Harper's, Nation, Foreign Policy, and Slate. A New York native, Brook lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Beinhaltet den Namen: Дэниэл Брук

Werke von Daniel Brook

Getagged

Wissenswertes

Geschlecht
male
Geburtsort
Brooklyn
Wohnorte
New Orleans
Berufe
journalist

Mitglieder

Rezensionen

UPDATE
I finished the book and it went more or less as I anticipated: tons of new information on Shanghai and Mumbai, then torture with St. Petersburg. Thank God later Dubai joined it as a whipping boy. All in all impression left by the book: St. Petersburg and Dubai is hubris, two others are shining examples of daring human spirit.

***
Just started. Intro was inspiring. Along came Chapter 1 on my native Russia and the city I lived 2 years in and a monarch about whom Robert K. Massie wrote a stunning masterpiece (Peter the Great: His Life and World). Nearly every paragraph makes me cringe: patronizing tone here, dubious shortcut there, sensation making oversimplification here, weird (an never heard by me) quote there. Oh, my what shall I do? I want to love the book, I want to believe it. But if I see how freely (and arbitrarily) he juggles the story of St. Petersburg to shoehorn it into his slick narrative, should I take his word for the places I know little about: Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai? Or he massages their stories in a similar fashion?… (mehr)
 
Gekennzeichnet
Den85 | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Jan 3, 2024 |
Dubai is indeed insane. I think putting it on the same list as St. Petersburg or Bombay is a bit far-fetched. The other cities are real cities, with growing native populations and working economies. Dubai is a temporary art installation.
 
Gekennzeichnet
Paul_S | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Oct 20, 2021 |
An intriguing case study of four attempts to plant Western cities in the global East: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Bombay and Dubai. The first and last were created by local autocrats, the middle two by foreign imperialists, but all four saw a polyglot population, an architectural mashup and cultural collision.

All four also saw significant limits to the rights and freedoms normally granted in the Western cities they emulate, intense poverty alongside opulent riches and simmering tensions between locals and outsiders.

Author Daniel Brook highlights these contradictions, mentioning but not dwelling on both sides of the Future Cities' stories. His case studies are offered up as lessons for other developing cities hoping to borrow from the West without losing what made them unique before.

Brook's historical analysis takes a middle ground between the nationalists who want to keep foreign influence out and the copycats who want to erase the local. Both are necessary, he argues. In a closing metaphor, he points to an exhibit in St. Petersburg's Hermitage art gallery, in which Roman copies of Greek statues are displayed. "That the Romans copied does not mean that history is nothing but copying," Brook writes. "But it does mean that copying is an integral part of history."
… (mehr)
 
Gekennzeichnet
dhmontgomery | 2 weitere Rezensionen | Dec 13, 2020 |
Excellent, highly recommend. Everyone should read this book... Nearly everyone would learn something because we for sure do not learn in high school about reconstruction as it truly happened.

Audiobook note :excellent narrator
 
Gekennzeichnet
marshapetry | Oct 16, 2020 |

Dir gefällt vielleicht auch

Statistikseite

Werke
3
Mitglieder
279
Beliebtheit
#83,281
Bewertung
4.1
Rezensionen
4
ISBNs
10

Diagramme & Grafiken