Explores some of the most extraordinary ancient cities from around the world that have been abandoned, forgotten or hidden by time, and ponders the lessons they can teach us today.

"Annalee Newitz takes readers on an ... adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy's southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia,...

"Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed "The Lost Village," since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother's entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left--a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn--have plagued her. She's gathered a small crew...

"Since the days of conquistador Hern?n Cort?s, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God...In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three...