Ten Cities explores the Relationship Between Nightlife and Creativity

At a time when none of us can congregate freely and without fear, absorbing a book about the influences of nightlife and club culture feels both deeply inspiring and more than a little bittersweet. As we are denied the experience of crowding into sweaty, packed spaces in close proximity to other bodies and loud music, Ten Cities (Spector Books) reads like a kind of fever dream. While the idea of nightclubs as factories of invention is certainly nothing new, that narrative often focuses on cities like New York, Chicago, Manchester, Detroit, or London. Ten Cities turns its gaze farther afield, charting the history of club culture in such far-flung locales as Nairobi, Cairo, Lagos, and Lisbon, beginning in 1960 and working up to the present.