A Great and Monstrous Thing

This “magisterial history of London” explores the rapidly changing culture and commerce of the eighteenth century in “a book that hums with vitality” ( Times Literary Supplement , UK). London in the eighteenth century was a new city, risen from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666. The century that followed was an era of vigorous expansion and rapid change as waves of people were drawn to its wealth, power, and many diversions. Borrowing a phrase from Daniel Defoe, Jerry White calls London “this