Carlo Rotella's October Cities brings admirable clarity to the often-cloudy debate about the fate of American cities. Examining urban writers like Nelson Algren and Claude Brown, Rotella traces how downtown areas have become 'postindustrial' -- with the flight of manufacturing industries, the separation of black ghettos from the suburban ring, and the burgeoning of a service economy (hotels, glassy highrises) in a downtown that few call home. Rotella performs an impressive balancing act, shifting between an urban history of Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, and a literary history of their most famous streetscapes (Algren's white-ethnic enclaves, Philly's South Street, the Harlem of Claude Brown, Warren Miller and Malcolm X).

Highly recommended for anyone interested in how our downtown areas have become a fait accompli -- magnets for anxieties about crime and racial violence, as well as objects of intense capital speculation.