Gopnik, Adam. Through the Children's Gate. New York: Random House, 2006. ISBN: 0676978266
This is a set of short stories and essays about living in New York. The quality of them ranges from outstanding to merely good. The ones I found less interesting tended to be too cerebral, and used (to me) obscure references to music and art that I was not familiar with. "The Last of the Metrozoids" is heartbreaking and brilliant.