Stephen L. Dyson
There is a large and diverse genre of works centered on ruins. Much of it is written in the Romantic tradition and focuses on classical and medieval ruins from the Renaissance to the Romantic era. Broken Cities takes the study of ruins in more creative conceptual directions across a greater geographical range.
Amy Richlin
A serious political critique that is also highly readable; Martin Devecka travels ruined cities down the millennia. Provocative, erudite, moving; a reminder to look around us at the ruins of the future as they are formed in the long present.
Andrew Laird
This engaging account of ruins and their uses amounts to a provocative and illuminating exposé of flawed assumptions at the heart of antiquarian studies. Broken Cities should prove to be as important for understanding present attitudes to the past as Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities has been for the history of nationalism.
From the Publisher
There is a large and diverse genre of works centered on ruins. Much of it is written in the Romantic tradition and focuses on classical and medieval ruins from the Renaissance to the Romantic era. Broken Cities takes the study of ruins in more creative conceptual directions across a greater geographical range.—Stephen L. Dyson, author of Rome: A Living Portrait of an Ancient City
Martin Devecka offers a rich, illuminating, and well-researched study of the complex sociological processes leading to the production of ruins.—David E. Karmon, author of The Ruin of the Eternal City: Antiquity and Preservation in Renaissance Rome
A serious political critique that is also highly readable; Martin Devecka travels ruined cities down the millennia. Provocative, erudite, moving; a reminder to look around us at the ruins of the future as they are formed in the long present.—Amy Richlin, University of California, Los Angeles, author of Slave Theater in the Roman Republic: Plautus and Popular Comedy
This engaging account of ruins and their uses amounts to a provocative and illuminating exposé of flawed assumptions at the heart of antiquarian studies. Broken Cities should prove to be as important for understanding present attitudes to the past as Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities has been for the history of nationalism.—Andrew Laird, Brown University
David E. Karmon
Martin Devecka offers a rich, illuminating, and well-researched study of the complex sociological processes leading to the production of ruins.
