Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187868 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .1 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Sennett (The Fall of Public Man) has produced an engrossing history of the city told through its people's movements: how they dressed, bathed and made love, where they ate, what they saw and heard. He first examines Athenians' celebration of nakedness and the Romans' use of geometrical images derived from the human body to impose order on their imperial realm. Next he brings us to the 13th-century Paris of Notre Dame Cathedral, where burgeoning enterprises challenged the Christian sense of place and community. A New York Univeristy sociologist, Sennett discusses the creation of Venice's Jewish ghetto in the 16th century, then links William Harvey's discoveries about blood circulation to individualized movement and bodily freedom in revolutionary 18th-century Paris. In the modern multicultural metropolis, he says the buildings contribute to a lack of emotional connection, as well as monotony and sensory deprivation. Sennett forces us to rethink architecture, social history and urban design and planning. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Sennett (sociology, NYU) has constructed a truly unique study of the human history of cities. He tackles the history of the development of the city in terms of the human body's function and perception. He describes the city's activities in the terminology of physiology (i.e., veins, arteries), in political terms (i.e., class, race), and through other labeling and divisive terms. His examination includes city plans, architectural design and public transportation, and the movement of peoples. Sennett's examples span the continuum of Western civilization. He explores the concept of the body in Athens, Rome, Paris, Venice, London, and New York. His prose is direct and accessible to even the most beginning student. However, his "body" metaphors at times stray from his purpose, diluting his otherwise fascinating presentation. Recommended for academic libraries and only larger public libraries.
Jenny Presnell, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In such books as The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities (1990) and this highly original, multidisciplinary history, Sennett explores the link between perception of our physical self and the shape of our cities. He has selected six cities at significant points in their evolution, beginning with ancient Athens and the cult of nakedness. For the city's male citizens, exposure was proof of strength and power, and they displayed their bodies in public places notable for their openness and airiness. In Hadrian's Rome, on the other hand, the "visual order" of symmetrical design reassured a populace more attuned to the body's vulnerability to illness, age, and violence. Moving forward in time, Sennett analyzes shifting attitudes toward the body, spirituality, health, sexuality, politics, prejudice, and economics, uncovering rarely considered facts about life in the Jewish ghetto of Renaissance Venice, in Paris during its medieval and revolutionary eras, in Edwardian London, and in contemporary New York. In each setting, he demonstrates the ways in which increased medical and scientific knowledge influenced the structure of cities as well as the interface between church and state, body and soul. Donna Seaman