The World as We Built It

For over 10,000 years, humans have been busy altering our environment, evolving from communities of hunter-gatherers to the independent, metropolitan sophisticates that we see ourselves as today. By the early 21st century, humans had become a majority urban species for the first time. What exactly made that possible, and how did the essential infrastructure of modern life-the innovations that we barely even notice, but without which our world would fall apart-happen?


With his characteristic wit and boundless curiosity, Jonn Elledge invites us to join him on a fascinating and often surprising tour of 35 of the ideas and technologies that made modernity possible. From elevators to electric lighting, street numbering to sewers, plumbing and lighting to walls and windows, he guides us through the history of the making of our built environment. Revealing fascinating origin stories about seemly ordinary systems and reminding us that much of the technology we take for granted was once earth-shattering, Elledge invites us to join him on an illuminating, uproarious, and often surprising tour of the history of the world as we know and live in it.