Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice.

Describes London from the time of the Druids to the beginning of the twenty-first century, noting magnificence in both epochs. This title includes chapters on the history of silence and the history of light, the history of childhood and the history of suicide, the history of Cockney speech and the history of drink.

An exploration of Los Angeles, told with passion, wit and a sharp eye for the absurd, the unjust and the dangerous. The author tells a lurid tale of greed, manipulation, power and prejudice that has made LA one of the most cosmopolitan and class-divided cities in the United States.

Tells the story of the terrifying cholera epidemic that engulfed London in 1854, and the two unlikely heroes - anaesthetist Doctor John Snow and affable clergyman Reverend Henry Whitehead - who defeated the disease through a combination of local knowledge, scientific research and map-making.

The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at centre of its own bewildering world. A stranger has come, with an impossible demand, and something unthinkable is released. Soon the city is gripped by an alien terror. The urban nightscape becomes a hunting ground and a reckoning is due at the city's heart, in the vast edifice of Perdido Street Station.

An account of the world's first megalopolis.

Explores the city's raisons d'etre, functions and forms, its achievements and problems, from fortifications to sewers, factories to markets, theatres and bars. Standing alongside Lewis Mumford's 1962 classic, The City in History , this book also looks at how cities develop and thrive, how they can decline and die, how they remake themselves.

With a third of the global urban population already living in Dickensian slums, at least half under the age of twenty, this book explores the threat of disease, of forced settlement on hazardous terrains, and of state violence on huge populations. It also shows how poverty grew massively in the 1990s.

Includes writings on urban economics, bosses and machines, urban development, the creative class, metro politics, Occidentalism, Asian mega cities, and urban futurism. This book provides the mapping of the terrain of Urban Studies. It is illustrated with over forty photographs and is intended for those interested in the city.

Joseph Rykwert explores the great cities of the modern world, examining their fabric and assessing how successfully they have met the needs of their inhabitants. The book covers city centres of the industrial revolution, exclusive gated suburbs of the 21st century, Parisian boulevards of Haussmann and the 'green' architecture of Emilio Ambasz.

An explanation of how and why cities took the shape they did. It focuses on a number of themes - organic patterns, the grid, the city as diagram, the grand manner and the skyline - and interprets the hidden order of urban patterns. Photographs depict a global mosaic of citybuilding.

It is fast becoming clear that our lives revolve around the powers of emergence. Order arrives from the bottom-up, not top-down. This work looks at the cities we inhabit, the media frenzies we suffer and the games we play, showing how individual actions without central planning often create a wonderfully adaptive communal intelligence.

The stunningly original and brilliant first novel from a storytelling genius

The history of a rarely written about, bewilderingly exotic city: 500 years of clashing cultures and peoples, from the glories of Suleiman the Magnificent to its nadir under Nazi occupation.

Focuses on the cities of Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Melbourne and London, comparing and contrasting their social, political and topographical development.

This is the story of the men and women whose lives were irrevocably changed by the Chicago World Fair, and of two men in particular: an architect and a serial killer. Spicing the narrative are the stories of a cast of historical characters including Buffalo Bill, Scott Joplin and Theodore Dreiser.