The WEIRDEST People in the World - Joseph Henrich

 A potentially fascinating book exploring the psychological and conceptual differences between the Western European psyche and culture and that of the rest of the world, and how this helps explain the rise and dominance of the West.  He looks at all kinds of things - individualism vs. social and familial integration,  social cohesion vs. individual perception and judgement, the locus of causality and guilt, and many others.

One interesting point that he makes is how the Catholic Church revolutionized social relations in the West by forbidding cousin marriage, thereby forcing people to reach out beyond their immediate familial circles to develop a wider web of relations.

Unfortunately, the book delves into the background, research and experiments a bit too deeply and it begins to drag.  I would like to read a version with the main themes and conclusions and a simple summary of the background related to each.  Because of this quality, I couldn't finish the book.

Try again, reading only the beginning and end of each section for the main points and themes.

Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul - Jeremiah Moss

Brilliant look at gentrification - causes, specifics, effects.  Told through the changes that have happened in different New York neighbourhoods.  He looks at specific longtime businesses, at the politics and policy behind changes, at the effects on lower income families, at the disaster that sometimes follows high rent gentrification.  He also adds comments and analysis from the literature on gentrification and its effects - these are good sources for followup.  There is also some discussion of the social changes that are behind this gentrification and suburbanization of the city.
I like his view of the historical role and importance of cities - essentially an environment of freedom and tolerance.
Reading this book brings back a lot of memories from my trips to New York in the late 70s.  Also, early days in Toronto.  The process of urban change has been similar in Toronto, though not so extreme or so rapid.  But the result, the "same-ification", the whitewashing, the commodification has been the same.
Interesting to read someone writing about the same questions and complaints I have had about Toronto over the past few years.  A subject to pursue.

The real question though, is what next?  If the city has lost its place and role as a home for diversity and difference, where do you go?  Scattered and down your own rabbit hole?

Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London - Matthew Beaumont

An exploration of night in the city of London through literary portraits from Chaucer to Dickens.
The book offers a great picture of the life of the street in pre-modern times, with all the sights, smells and sounds that are so often forgotten.
It is also a social history of the grind of poverty and the attempt to survive in periods when being poor and destitute was essentially criminalized.  At the same time it is a history of the elite's exercise of control and authority in the urban environment, and the sense of threat that the street presented them.  You get a sense of the authoritarian oppressiveness of the ruling class in English history.
There are several sections that explore nightwalking as an antiestablishment artistic/social phenomenon, which is interesting.  Links to Wordsworth and other Romantic poets.
Dickens was also a great nightwalker, mainly due to insomnia - this walking is given credit for his understanding of the street and the many inhabitants of it, both low and high.

Well-written.