Elledge, Jonn. A Brief History of Cities in 32 Inventions. The Experiment. 2026. ISBN13: 979-8-893-03164-5. $24.95.
Published in the U.K. as Elledge, Jonn. 31 Inventions That Built Our World. Headline Publishing Group. 2026. ISBN13: 978-1-035-43276-9. £25.00.
It’s such a pleasure to read a well-composed book.
As a fellow writer, I appreciate the effort Jonn Elledge put into drafting and polishing A Brief History of Cities in 32 Inventions. I also appreciate his editors’ attention to detail, asking (several dozen times, I imagine), whether Jonn really needed that footnote, and the skill Matthew Burne showed in creating the minimalist but evocative illustrations at the head of each chapter.
I also appreciate how well the chapters connect within the text. Writing about 32 separate inventions that, as the U.S. title of the book indicates, contributed to the rise and success of cities, can lead to episodic coverage where concepts and facts are repeated rather than referenced. Taking care to braid the narrative threads properly turns a good book into an outstanding one.
The thirty-one inventions in the UK version start with the invention of the city itself, a settlement named Uruk where tens of thousands of humans gathered between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. From there, Elledge discusses walls, windows, water movement (I’d forgotten that Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London stands at the end of a 40-mile aqueduct originating in Hertfordshire), and other artifacts of early urban life. He rounds out the first section with coverage of parks, street grid layouts, as well as skyscrapers and their attendant elevators and escalators.
With that narrative (and physical) infrastructure in place, Elledge turns to transportation. There’s the usual discussion of cars and canals, busses, cars, and subways (shout out to the Central Line of the London Underground, which runs through the author’s home stomping ground of east London), but I have a special appreciation for the subject of the first chapter in this section: horses. I grew up in rural Virginia and have spent time around horses, but what I remember most in this context was cows.
Bear with me.
Horses, cows, and other animals that walk on four longish legs tend to see the entire world as their restroom. Until my brother and I were old enough to drive, we got off the school bus just up the road from a crossing where a herd of dairy cows would move between pasture and barn twice a day. As Elledge notes in the context of horses in London and other major cities, the “mud” on the ground was not, in fact, mud. If a herd of fifty or so cows produces impressive amounts of manure, imagine a city filled to the brim with horses.
The final section adds coverage of useful schemes such as street numbering, pedestrian crossing design, and the much-celebrated London Tube map. It’s famously not to geographic scale, a characteristic that helps navigation rather than hurts it. I’m not sure I want to see The Truth About Harry Beck, a one-hour dramatic piece about the map’s creator, but I will probably buy the playscript next time I’m in town.
A Brief History of Cities in 32 Inventions came out in the U.S. on October 13, 2026. The thirty-second chapter discusses what became known as the General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy, which offered speculation on the reason for the Los Angeles streetcar system’s collapse. I was vaguely familiar with the story and appreciate the added detail.
Every chapter provides substantial information on its subject—there’s no weak link in the bunch. I recommend Elledge’s work without reservation.
