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London: The Biography | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Ackroyd
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $5.93
You Save: $14.02 (70%)
New (35) Used (41) from $5.92
Avg. Customer Rating:  50 reviews
Sales Rank: 103590
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 848
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.7
ISBN: 0385497717
Dewey Decimal Number: 942.1
EAN: 9780385497718
ASIN: 0385497717
Publication Date: April 8, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Here are two thousand years of London’s history and folklore, its chroniclers and criminals and plain citizens, its food and drink and countless pleasures. Blackfriar’s and Charing Cross, Paddington and Bedlam. Westminster Abbey and St. Martin in the Fields. Cockneys and vagrants. Immigrants, peasants, and punks. The Plague, the Great Fire, the Blitz. London at all times of day and night, and in all kinds of weather. In well-chosen anecdotes, keen observations, and the words of hundreds of its citizens and visitors, Ackroyd reveals the ingenuity and grit and vitality of London. Through a unique thematic tour of the physical city and its inimitable soul, the city comes alive.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 History June 26, 2008
Meet the family of characters and events that go to making up the world's most easily recognised name . This book invites you in and sits you down , to eat of the feast of interesting and intriguing characters that are London .
Compelling History April 27, 2008
This book was fantastic. I could hardly put it down. Since I'm a history buff and London is one of my favorite cities, reading this book was a real treat.
 Book in search of a good editor April 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This 773-page book is a good 500-page history waiting for an editor.
Too much rambling and philosophizing without enough history and geography.
About 300 pages in, the reader begins to realize that Ackroyd is never going to settle down to writing enough history or geography to make the subject really meaningful, and begins to feel cheated by this unnecessary waste of time.
It should have been better.
Ackroyd also edited a set of photgraphs of Dickens' London: An Imaginative Vision
alternately frustrating and interesting September 13, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is at times very interesting. At times it is a chore to wade through the attempts to link places and times throughout history. The author really reaches for connections through history as if making them is the only point of the book. I wonder if he was just trying to find something to link the various subjects so that the book didn't feel completely disjointed. The organization by theme instead of chronology sometimes gives the book this feel. I personally liked that it was not a simple chronology, however.
Some of the other reviewers have mentioned the lack of maps. I can't stress enough the need to have some on hand while you are reading this book! If you are genuinely curious you will find it maddening not be able to see the streets and places so picturesquely described.
Having said all of that, I have certainly learned quite a bit. The poor are often not much recorded in history and there is a lot to be found about them in this book. Certainly, the poor are discussed far more than the wealthy, but their numbers and thus their impact was greater.
Ultimately, this book is like an impressionist painting. If you look at the details it doesn't always seem clear. But the whole is an intriguing image of a massive and ever changing subject.
 Rambling and incoherent June 28, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
For the life of me, I can't figure out why this book gets so much good press. Ackroyd has clearly never met a metaphor that he didn't like, and apparently feels that the frequent (and often bizarrely misplaced) use of such can replace good writing. The whole book reads like a giant editorial which has no point, and facts merge too subtly into half-truths, suppositions, and out-and-out falsities without any guidance to navigate through through them. If you're looking for a good history of London, look elsewhere. If you're looking for good commentary on London society throughout the ages, tough luck.
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