In the 18th century, London, Paris, and New York were much as they are today: world-class cities where political authority, money, art, and intellectual life intersected. Did this make them sources of enlightenment, progress, and civilization, where new ideas of society and government could flourish, or were they in reality dens of vice and disorder, where malcontents could find ready followers? From hundreds of firsthand accounts, Mike Rapport vividly evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of these leading cities, exploring their histories during a revolutionary age in an effort to understand how such places and the people within them influence each other.