(FORTUNE Magazine) – Does anyone really read on the beach? Not to worry--you'll hold forth with the best of them at the clambake with our literary guide to the sweltering urban world you forsook.

THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD by Ray Suarez. American cities and the effects of the great suburban migration of the past 30 years. Casual bon mot: People still gotta watch football somewhere! Pittsburgh, bucking a national trend, refused to be strong-armed into financing lavish downtown stadiums--but hasn't yet lost a team.

NO SHAME IN MY GAME: THE WORKING POOR IN THE INNER CITY by Katherine S. Newman. A two-year study of low-wage earners in Harlem, finding that mainstream working values permeate even workers below the poverty line. Casual bon mot: But minimum-wage work alone is no magic fix--few of the study's fast-food slingers moved on to better jobs.

METROPOLIS This large-format magazine examines architecture through layman-accessible smart writing and photography. Casual bon mot: Coverage includes the unreal estate of computer-interface designs and architecture as propaganda in Saddam's Iraq.

CITY OF LIGHT by Lauren Belfer. A Ragtime-esque novel of an up-and-coming city of the last turn of the century--Buffalo--set in 1901, when Niagara-generated hydroelectricity heralded the future and the Pan-American Exposition promised glory. Casual bon mot: Things took a gloomy turn when President McKinley got shot there.

JAMES PONIEWOZIK is media editor of Salon