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5 Cities That Ruled The World: How Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London & New York Shaped Global History (2009)

by Douglas Wilson(Favorite Author)

3.48 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1595551360 (ISBN13: 9781595551368)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Thomas Nelson Publishers

review 1: As an admirer of Douglas Wilson, I always appreciate his writing as full of wisdom and sound biblical perspective--5 Cities That Ruled the World is no exception. Running through the histories of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and New York, Wilson identifies each city's major influence on the world: religion, democracy, justice, literature, and trade. In his epilogue, Wilson emphasizes the necessity of liberty for nations to prosper, although he admits that "when liberty arrives, all kinds of things start to happen--many of them bad. But one of the comforting things is that in the long run, stupidity doesn't work. We learn our lessons slowly." As Christians, however, we must understand that progress does not need to come quickly: "But historian Christopher Dawson once sai... mored that the church lives in the light of eternity and can afford to be patient." By looking at the bigger picture of history, 500 years at a time, Wilson says we can have hope that the church and the gospel will succeed in its mission. And in the end, these monumental cities will be swallowed up by a better city--the city of God. "That stone, the kingdom of God, would destroy them [cities of man] in their ancient manifestation and would replace them, gathering them up into itself." Wilson, in 5 Cities That Ruled the World, gives Christians great hope that the church is succeeding with the bigger picture of the entire world.
review 2: This is more of a hodge-podge of thoughts about 5 very important cities. It's hard to see how Jerusalem and Athens "ruled the world," but their influences, like those of the other cities, with the exception of New York (not yet anyway), resound through history. The author has very interesting things to say about many things. However, it didn't hold together as a whole for me. The author does approach this from a religious point of view which would notlikely be offensive to anyone, but just may not be shared by all readers. There is some odd material included, like New York's influence through the origination of baseball. It took me a while to get through this with good reason. less

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