I have just started, or more specifically restarted, The City in History by Lewis Mumford. Written in 1961 the book is nearly 600 pages and chronicles the city from its Paleolithic origins to modern suburban culture. I’ve created a reading plan which will hopefully be slow enough to help me absorb and think about the material of the book, while hopefully not drawing it out too long so I never finish it. My goal is to have it finished in two weeks. Right now Mumford is talking about Hammurabi and the early formation of walled cities.

Here is the quote about modern 1960s society which originally made me pick up the book, and might make someone else interested. 

On the fringe of mass Suburbia, even the advantages of the primary neighborhood group disappear. The cost of this detachment in space from other men is out of all proportion to its supposed benefits. The end product is an encapsulated life, spent more and more either in a motor car or within the cabin of darkness before a television set: soon, with a little more automation of traffic, mostly in a motor car, travelling even greater distances, under remote control, so that the one-time driver may occupy himself with a television set, having lost even the freedom of steering wheel. Every part of this life, indeed, will come through official channels and be under supervision. Untouched by human hand at one end: untouched by human spirit at the other. Those who accept this existence might as well be encased in a rocket hurtling through space, so narrow are their choices, so limited and deficient their permitted responses. Here indeed we find ‘The Lonely Crowd.’

- Lewis Mumford, the City in History 1961

I am looking forward to sharing more of my impressions on this book as I read and hope others will comment on my thoughts.