PD Smith

For the last cou­ple of days I’ve been read­ing old news­pa­pers as part of my research for Watch­ing the Detectives. I love it — you come across such remark­able sto­ries. And the lan­guage, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry papers, is won­der­ful. I enjoyed this item from the News in Brief col­umn of the Times in 1921:

“At Old-street Police Court yes­ter­day an old man com­plained to Mr. Clarke Hall that he had lent his daugh­ter £10, which she refused to give back. The daugh­ter said he had giv­en it her to bury him.”

I have just been told that Audi­ble have cho­sen City as one of the titles they will be pro­duc­ing in audio­book for­mat this year! I can’t wait to hear what City will sound like…

Alli­son Ari­eff has writ­ten a piece for her New York Times col­umn called Read­ing the City, in which she dis­cuss­es books pub­lished this year that engage with her “recur­ring obses­sions — cities, walk­ing, sub­ur­bia”. They include Torre David: Infor­mal Ver­ti­cal Com­mu­ni­ties, Jeff Speck­’s Walk­a­ble City, and Dave Eggers’s nov­el A Holo­gram for the King. She also men­tions my own book, City:

“The author’s ideas are orig­i­nal and inven­tive enough to war­rant his descrip­tion of the book as ‘a guide­book to an imag­i­nary Everyc­i­ty.’ It’s a great thinker whose mus­ings run the gamut from the Aztec cap­i­tal of Tenochti­t­lan to Tahrir Square, graf­fi­ti to glad­i­a­tors, who can quote the Old Tes­ta­ment and Baude­laire, and throw in an info­graph­ic enti­tled, ‘When sky­scrap­ers rise, do mar­kets fall?’”

Read Allison’s whole piece here.

Although the weath­er out­side my win­dow is mis­er­able, wet and not at all fes­tive, I want to wish every­one a very hap­py Christ­mas! And I hope some­one, some­where has snow…

Edwin Heath­cote, archi­tec­ture crit­ic of the Finan­cial Times, includ­ed City among his Best Books of 2012. This is what he said:

“The city is a big sub­ject but this is read­able, con­cise and extreme­ly enter­tain­ing. Smith spans the emer­gence of the first Mid­dle East­ern cities – places with no streets, so inhab­i­tants need­ed to walk on roofs and descend lad­ders to reach their homes – up to infor­mal set­tle­ments and high-tech hubs today. Well-researched, well-writ­ten and clear.”

Cana­di­an author Taras Grescoe has writ­ten an excel­lent piece in the Globe & Mail on City and Jeff Speck’s Walk­a­ble City. Writ­ing about City, he notes that “this crash course in urban civ­i­liza­tion is a reminder of the com­plex­i­ty, cos­mopoli­tanism and cre­ativ­i­ty that are engen­dered, and encour­aged, by liv­ing and work­ing cheek by jowl”. Read the arti­cle here.

Eric Liebe­trau, edi­tor of Kirkus Reviews, has also includ­ed City among his Best Non­fic­tion of 2012. The full list is here.

Post­script, 8 Decem­ber:

City was among the Notable Books of 2012 cho­sen by archi­tec­tur­al writer Mark Lam­ster for Design­ers & Books. I’m still blush­ing at his ful­some praise for the book:

“Read­ing it is like being seat­ed next to the most-informed, and most charm­ing guest at your dream din­ner par­ty, some­one with an end­less font of facts enlivened by quirky and often hilar­i­ous anec­dotes.”

Read the rest of what he had to say and see the oth­er excel­lent books he select­ed here. There was also a piece about City this week­end in the Los Ange­les Times by Car­olyn Kel­logg. She writes:

“Smith deft­ly inte­grates the nar­ra­tives of far-flung places across cen­turies. Dis­cussing sports with­in city bounds, he draws a con­nec­tion between the Roman Colos­se­um and skate­board­ers in Venice Beach. In this con­tin­u­um, he cre­ates an uber-city, a grand por­trait of what urban­i­ty is and might become.”

For the last few days I’ve been in Ams­ter­dam, tak­ing a break from writ­ing and talk­ing about City. I’d for­got­ten how beau­ti­ful Ams­ter­dam is.

For the first time I vis­it­ed the Muse­um Geelvinck-Hin­lopen, a late sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry man­sion fac­ing the Heren­gracht.

With its seclud­ed gar­den and lux­u­ri­ous rooms, it pro­vid­ed a mem­o­rable glimpse into a time when Ams­ter­dam was one of the wealth­i­est cities on the plan­et. But as I was walk­ing round, I noticed a small white plaque on a piano in the Blue Room. In won­der­ful­ly ornate script, it pro­claimed that the mak­ers of that piano were John Broad­wood & Sons, who were based in Great Pul­teney Street, near Gold­en Square, Lon­don — the city that would soon take over the role as the com­mer­cial cap­i­tal of the world.

If you’re plan­ning a trip to Ams­ter­dam, I would rec­om­mend Proev­er­ij 274 as a great place to eat (thanks to Matt Muir for that tip), and for a real­ly superb cup of cof­fee, Scream­ing Beans. They sell deli­cious almond cook­ies too.

I for­got to men­tion before I went away that the Guardian pub­lished my review of Taras Grescoe’s Straphang­er, an excel­lent whis­tle-stop tour of world cities and their trans­port sys­tems. Appar­ent­ly, Amer­i­cans now spend nine years of their lives sit­ting in their cars, and the pol­lu­tion they pro­duce kills 30,000 US cit­i­zens each year. You can read the review here.

When I got back from Ams­ter­dam, a very nice review of City was wait­ing for me, by Annick Labeca on Urban Lab Glob­al Cities. In it she admits to hav­ing read the book four times! I’m impressed… Also on City, I did a Q & A with Sherin Wing for Metrop­o­lis Mag­a­zine. That was post­ed online yes­ter­day and you can read it here. There’s also a slideshow of some of my urban pho­tos at the end.

Oh, and here are some of my pho­tos of Ams­ter­dam on Flickr. Enjoy…