I was thinking a lot about what it means to be a child growing up in a world in which you don’t understand why things are happening and nobody is doing something about it. “Flint, Michigan, had happened, and Sandy Hook had happened a few years before,” she says. On this week’s podcast, she says that returning to the novel at that moment changed the way she approached writing it. She eventually put the idea aside to work on what turned into her acclaimed debut novel, “Behold the Dreamers.” When she began working again on the earlier idea, it was 2016. The book concerns the impact of an American oil company’s presence on a fictional African village. Imbolo Mbue first began writing her new novel, “How Beautiful We Were,” in 2002. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | How to Listen They are also the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. They have published in The Washington Post, Slate, Popular Science, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among others. As a science journalist, they are a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and have a monthly column in New Scientist. They are the author of the book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age, and the novels The Future of Another Timeline, and Autonomous, which won the Lambda Literary Award. Four Lost Cities was named one of Apple's Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2021.Īnnalee Newitz writes science fiction and nonfiction.

Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements.

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. Sign up below.įour Lost Cities takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. They will discuss their new history book, Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age. Join us for a book discussion and reading with award-winning novelist, journalist, and podcaster Annalee Newitz.

Four lost cities book