Introduction Kevin R. McNamara; 1. Antebellum urban publics David Henkin; 2. Intersections: streets and other democratic spaces John Fagg; 3. The literature of neighborhood Carlo Rotella; 4. Writing the ghetto, inventing the slum Thomas Heise; 5. Urban borders, open wounds Ana María Manzanas Calvo and Jesús Benito Sánchez; 6. Gentrification James Peacock; 7. House rules: The New Yorker and the making of the white suburban liberal woman Kathy Knapp; 8. Transnational American cities: Camilo Mejía's ar Ramadi, Iraq, and Jason Hall's Topeka, Kansas John Carlos Rowe; 9. The poetics of rims: New Orleans Ruth Salvaggio; 10. American vertigo: the metropolis and the new biopolitical order William Boelhower; 11. Labor's city Joseph Entin; 12. White immigrant trajectories in US urban literature: the Italian American case Fred Gardaphé; 13. Crime and violence, or hard-boiled chronicles of mean streets and their hidden truths Brian Tochterman; 14. Disaster, apocalypse, and after Sean Grattan; 15. Bohemia Erik Mortenson; 16. The spatial turn and critical race studies Sophia Bamert and Hsuan L. Hsu; 17. From trauma theory to systemic violence: narratives of post-katrina New Orleans Arin Keeble; 18. Security theory Johannes Voelz; 19. Posthuman cities Andrew Pilsch; 20. Critical regionalism: why Hillbilly Elegy and its critics matter to writing about cities Douglas Reichert Powell; Coda: city and polis Kevin R. McNamara.