City and town life

Olivia Laing surveys the landscape of urban alienation in her new book, a work that is part-memoir and part-criticism. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Lonely City is "absolutely one of a kind."

Even as Detroit files for bankruptcy protection, Bruce Katz says many American cities are showing promising signs of renewal. In The Metropolitan Revolution, he writes that, together, cities and suburbs have the power to take on the challenges Washington won't.

Why all the adulatory attention, critics ask, for Jonathan Franzen's latest domestic drama about marriage and family? Even though Franzen gets more praise for doing what many fine female writers do "backwards and in heels," critic Maureen Corrigan says Freedom has earned its high praise.

Singer, musician and folklorist Mick Moloney's album, McNally's Row of Flats, centers on theater songs by an Irish songwriting team from the late 1800s.

The team consisted of actor and writer Ed Harrigan and musician David Braham, both acclaimed performers of the early Great White Way, when Vaudeville was giving way to American Musical Theater in New York City.

Singer, musician and folklorist Mick Moloney's new album, McNally's Row of Flats, centers on theater songs by an Irish songwriting team from the late 1800s. In those days, Vaudeville and minstrelsy were giving way to American Musical Theater in New York City.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews Dogville, by director Lars Von Trier.

The host of NPR's Talk of the Nation, Ray Suarez. He's the author of the new book, "The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999" (The Free Press)

We remember writer and urbanologist WILLIAM WHYTE. He died yesterday at the age of 81. The former editor of Fortune Magazine began a second career studing the life of urban cities. Whyte was best known for his 1956 book "Organization Man," a groundbreaking work that examined the mechanized rituals and routines of the corporate culture. His other books included, "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" (1980), and "City" (1989). (REBROADCAST from 2/22/89)

New York writer Daniel Drennan has written a new collection of essays about life in Manhattan. His book "The New York Diaries: Too True Tales of Urban Tramau" is published by Ballantine Books.