Built to Disappear: A field guide vanished cities, invented empires, and the true stories stranger than myths.

.Somewhere online right now, someone is staring at an old photograph - a window sunk below street level, a map with a country-sized blank space, a white palace that no longer exists - and asking what really happened. Built to Disappear follows that question all the way back to the paper trail. Chicago really did lift itself out of the mud on hand-turned jackscrews, building by building, while hotel guests stayed upstairs. Seattle really did bury its own streets, and you can still walk the old sidewalks underneath. The blank spaces European mapmakers labeled "Tartaria" really did hide an empire: the Mongols', the largest land empire in history. And in 1893 a gleaming white city of plaster rose on the shore of Lake Michigan, wired with more electricity than the city around it. It was gone within a year of closing, torched by arsonists in the middle of a national railroad strike. Z.C. Higgins traces internet-famous "hidden history" claims like mudflood and Tartaria back to named architects, city records, engineering reports, and the newspapers of the week it happened. Along the way: Sydney's Queen Victoria Building, Dunedin's "Gingerbread George" railway station, a 2,257-room hotel built to be scrapped, and a stunt pilot who plunged into San Francisco Bay in front of a fairground crowd. There are also Pompeii and Troy, cities that really were buried, and a five-question field guide for catching the next viral mystery before it fools you. The true stories turn out to be stranger, and better, than the myths built to replace them. Illustrated with 24 historical photographs, drawings, and maps.