The chronicles

How to read this shelf. These are the biggest, boldest undertakings in history — cities raised from marsh, seas moved, countries made. Each carried a real achievement and a real cost, and both are told here in full. How it reads depends on where you stand and what you count; a fair test is whether life actually got better for the people who lived it — safer, richer, more settled, a place people tried to get into rather than flee. Weigh both sides and decide for yourself.

Written for this app, not lifted from a book. Figures are the commonly cited ones, hedged where historians disagree, and the cost of each undertaking is stated with it.