Ed Glinert has written the first ever epic,
detailed, exciting, accurate history of the
world's first modern city - the industrial
strength city - from the Romans to 21st
century renaissance, from cotton machines to cultural richness, from Gothic to Gotham.
A volume that takes the reader back two thousand years, to the first stirrings of "Maenwicken", and ends now, in the 2020s. This is a spectacular story, a remarkable history that takes the reader from the Romans and ancient religious mystics to the machine makers of the industrial revolution, to the Victorian cotton merchants, the creators of the Gothic city and revered figures such as Emmeline Pankhurst, L. S. Lowry, Alan Turing, George Best, Tony Wilson and hundreds more pioneers who have created one of the world's greatest cities.
This is a history of the world's first industrial metropolis to rival the great city biographies, such as Peter Ackroyd's London and Simon Sebag Montefiore on Jerusalem, crafted by Manchester's best researched and most entertaining writer.
This is the book to captivate the public and secure Manchester's place among the world's best known cities.

Ed Glinert began researching Manchester history in 1977, determined to root out misconceptions and misunderstandings, and give Manchester the history it deserves. In 1983 he co-founded Manchester's City Life magazine, for whom he specialised in hard news. During the 1990s Glinert worked for Private Eye and Mojo, and since 2009 has conducted more than 5,000 tours of the Manchester area, as well as giving hundreds of talks to local groups, to the Arts Society, and on cruise ships. He has written more than a dozen books for Penguin, HarperCollins and Bloomsbury, including The London Compendium and Manchester Compendium.