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Once known for slum-like conditions in its immigrant and working-class neighborhoods, New York City's downtown now features luxury housing, chic boutiques and hotels, and, most notably, a vibrant nightlife culture. While a burgeoning bar scene can be viewed as a positive sign of urban transformation, tensions lurk beneath, reflecting the social conflicts within postindustrial cities.Upscaling Downtownexamines the perspectives and actions of disparate social groups who have been affected by or played a role in the nightlife of the Lower East Side, East Village, and Bowery. Using the social world of bars as windows into understanding urban development, Richard Ocejo argues that the gentrifying neighborhoods of postindustrial cities are increasingly influenced by upscale commercial projects, causing significant conflicts for the people involved. Ocejo explores what community institutions, such as neighborhood bars, gain or lose amid gentrification. He considers why residents continue unsuccessfully to protest the arrival of new bars, how new bar owners produce a nightlife culture that attracts visitors rather than locals, and how government actors, including elected officials and the police, regulate and encourage nightlife culture. By focusing on commercial newcomers and the residents who protest local changes, Ocejo illustrates the contested and dynamic process of neighborhood growth. Delving into the social ecosystem of one emblematic section of Manhattan,Upscaling Downtownsheds fresh light on the tensions and consequences of urban progress.

THE GANGS OF CHICAGO: AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE CHICAGO UNDERWORLD by [Herbert Asbury]. Arrow, 374pp, $26.95. When Asbury's 1928 Gangs of New York was filmed by Martin Scorsese, his 1940 classic Gem of the Prairie was bound to be reprinted. Here it is, decked out as The Gangs of Chicago.

  Former Euro MP for the Midlands David Hallam said he had been extensively researching the claim as part of a new book. Bishop Asbury's former home is now looked after by SandwellCouncil and has become a shrine for Methodists worldwide. Mr Hallam said: 'Websites about the film and [Herbert Asbury], who died in 1963, are now repeating the family link claim and Fran Carle, a niece of Herbert, is bringing out a book supporting this view.'

Herbert Asbury first shot to fame when a story he wrote got [Mencken]'s celebrated magazine, American Mercury, banned in Boston. The Boston vice squad arrested Mencken on April 5, 1926, on The Common when he sold a copy of the forbidden journal to the Rev. J. Frank Chase, secretary of the New England Watch and Ward Society. Chase demanded his arrest. A crowd of Harvard undergraduates cheered. And a Baltimore Sun reporter named W.A.S. Douglas got pinched along with Mencken because he was carrying a copy of the Mercury. Douglas protested that he was covering the story. The \"filth\" was the April 1926 issue of the Mercury, in which Asbury's tale, \"Hatrack,\" was published. \"Hatrack\" purported to be the story of a prostitute in Asbury's hometown, Farmington, Mo.

A: Gangs of New York. It's based on the 1928 novel, The Gangs of New York, by [Herbert Asbury]. A: Asbury was born in 1889 into a family of Methodist preachers. He was brought up in a devout household but rebelled at the age of 14. Q: Did Asbury find fortune as well as fame?

A MORE subversive writer than her Aga-saga image suggests, [Joanna Trollope] tends to side in her novels with life's bolters and two- timers. In Marrying the Mistress, it was the straying husband who grabbed the emotional high-ground, while in her best novel, Other People's Children, step-mothers were given an unusually good press. In this, her 11th book, Trollope examines the moral quandaries facing a younger generation. Revolving around the relationship dilemmas of a group of late-twentysomething flatmates, Trollope considers whether \"the young\" are made more miserable the more choices they have. Her conclusion, unsurprisingly, is yes. Henry and Tilly have lived together for 10 years. He's a wildlife photographer, she an editor on an arts magazine. They share a sociable life in Parsons Green. Tilly wants to get married, Henry is not so sure. At the height of their stalemate Tilly invites a young American woman to move into the spare room. In flight from her own unwedded status, the confusingly named Gillon finds herself drawn to Henry.

The gangs had colourful names and emblems. From the Five Points region around Chatham Square emerged the Shirt Tails, who wore their shirts outside their trousers, and the Dead Rabbits, who wore a red stripe and carried a dead rabbit impaled on a pike. Another gang of Irishmen called themselves the Plug Uglies and wore plug-shaped hats stuffed with wool and leather which they drew down over their ears to serve as helmets when they went into battle against the Bowery Boys. NYC's other major political party, the Native Americans, was equally corrupt in its struggle for the privilege of plundering public funds. Its platform was the repeal of the political freedoms given to foreign immigrants, especially the Irish, and like Tammany Hall it used gangs as enforcers - rioting at polling booths, smashing ballot boxes and slugging honest citizens. For example, Slobbery Jim and Patsy the Barber, two members of the most violent river gang, the Daybreak Boys, came upon a newly- landed German immigrant walking at the tip of Manhattan.

Chase demanded his arrest. A crowd of Harvard undergraduates cheered. And a Baltimore Sun reporter named W.A.S. Douglas got pinched along with [Mencken] because he was carrying a copy of the Mercury. Douglas protested that he was covering the story. \"Hatrack\" is reprinted and Mencken's history of the censorship case is recounted in The Editor, the Bluenose and the Prostitute, edited by Mencken biographer Carl Bode and published in 1988 by Roberts Rinehart Inc. After his arrest in Boston, Mencken was released on his own recognizance. He had a drink with the Sun reporter and went to bed. At his hearing the next morning, he argued that \"Hatrack\" was \"not in fact obscene within any rational meaning of the law, that the American Mercury never printed salacious matter and that my own attacks on comstockery [were aimed at] its raids on serious and meritorious publications.\"

[Herbert Asbury]'s main concern is for the story, not the facts, and the book is all the better for it. A particular delight is the vocabulary, finding the origins for words such as carpetbagger, bushwhacked and even jazz (derived from the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band, apparently). This is a gargantuan compendium of wickedness, a world of glamour and venality that is as romantic as it is alien. Asbury has not only documented the villains and rogues of New Orleans, he has brought them triumphantly back to life.

Herbert Asbury, author of the book Gangs of New York, claimed to be descended from an alleged half-brother of Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury, who grew up in Great Barr. Websites about the film and Herbert Asbury, who died in 1963, are now repeating the family link and Fran Carle, Herbert's American niece, is bringing out a book supporting the claim. He went on: 'Herbert claimed that the Bishop's father, Joseph Asbury, had fathered a child, Thomas, with a first wife, Susan Whipple. It is alleged that Francis's mother, [Elizabeth Windsor], was Joseph's second wife, but this has never been proved.