The Seven Wonders of the World: A History of the Modern Imagination

Now they exist only within the precise, rectangular pits of excavated remains that capture a once-powerful dream whose images continue to echo around us. But, centuries ago, the Seven Wonders of the World were advertisements for a contemporary, thrilling, and heroic way of life, the finest examples of a brand-new civic architecture, the ancestors of every modern city on the planet. Here is the history behind these legendary lost structures: the enormous statue to the Greek god Zeus, carved by Phidias and holding a figure of Victory in one hand and a scepter in the other; the Colossus of Rhodes, a tribute to freedom looking up to Olympus and over the sea; the elegant lighthouse on the island of Pharos in Alexandria; the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, adorned with numerous statues and carvings; the many-tiered Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, as beautiful as the goddess for whom it was named; and the eternal Pyramids and the Rise of Wonder.