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Jonn Elledge on Muck Rack

Jonn Elledge

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As seen in: The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything, Apple Podcasts, The Waterstones Podcast, MSN Australia, MSN UK, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Yahoo Canada, Metro (UK), The London Standard and
New Book: 31 Inventions That Built Our World (UK, out now) / A Brief History of Cities in 32 Inventions (US, 13 October).

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Articles

City walls conquered the ancient world and then disappeared. Why?

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By Jonn Elledge Verified
| Big Think Verified
A literature column to feed your curiosity. History and SocietyHistoryAncient HistoryUrban StudiesCities Adapted from A Brief History of Cities in 32 Inventions: The Ideas and Technologies That Made Modernity Possible by Jonn Elledge. Published by The Experiment. Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved. Ancient cities — the kind we know of more through archaeology than written history — tend to have a bunch of features that set them apart from smaller, less ambitious settlements.
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A more perfect union

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By Jonn Elledge Verified
| The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything
Also: how Jameson and Diaz are actually the exact same name. All this went to paying subscribers in June. Some years ago now I read a book1 about US politics which repeatedly insisted on confusing the hell out of me. Firstly it referred to Kansas City, Missouri, which baffled me because surely Kansas City would be in Kansas.
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The Last Laugh

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By Jonn Elledge Verified
| The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything
This week: oh god, she’s calling it Kemistry. Also: why is every English word for toilet a euphemism? And some notes on Winston Churchill’s cats. It’s easy to mock Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative party. It’s fun, too, so let’s give it a go. I knew we were in for a fun ride this weekend when the party kicked off its annual jamboree in Birmingham with an 88-foot, AI-generated replica of the Bayeux Tapestry.
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