Book excerpt: The Evolution of Urban Society is concerned with the presentation and analysis of regularities in the two best-documented examples of early, independent urban society: Mesopotamia and central Mexico. It provides a systematic comparison of institutional forms and trends of growth that are to be found in both of them. Adams shows why the study of societal evolution is so significant, and why it has remained a durable and attractive anthropological focus of interest. The Evolution of Urban Society remains required reading for students of anthropology, ethnography, ancient civilizations, and world history. As Elizabeth Carter noted in Science, this volume set the agenda for contemporary research into early urbanism in the [Mesopotamian] region.