Twentieth-century voluntary social work organizations became accustomed to altering the emphases of their work in response to changing legislation or shifts in funding priorities. The House of Charity for Distressed Persons in Soho, founded in 1846, provides a nineteenth-century example of a similar phenomenon. The history of its first 70 years suggests that the intention to serve ‘selected deserving persons’ was outweighed by the need to ensure the spiritual well-being of its benefactors through opportunities for Christian service. Its primary purpose was thereby subverted, and the energies of its workers were diverted from raising funds to support ‘selected deserving persons’ to casting round for ways to fill the space in the House and to continue to give the benefactors a role.

Manhattan's landscape contains few material reminders of its colonial past. Traces of the Native Americans who frequented the island, the Dutch who planted New Amsterdam at its tip and the various European and African peoples who populated the city renamed New York by the English in 1664 are few and far between. Though the obliteration of the tangible remains of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century city dwellers speeded the transformation of Manhattan into a vibrant twentieth-century metropolis, the dearth of visible signs of this era has complicated historians' efforts to fabricate enduring images of the men and women of this early urban society. Their stories, though dutifully rehearsed by schoolbook writers and museum curators, have rarely become etched in memory.

The formation of Manchuria in 1932 gave local cities along the Japan Sea coast new hope for development. However, their interpretation of imperialism was in terms of the city rather than the nation. The ways in which these discourses of nation and region played out in ideas of urban development are particularly clear in Kanazawa, the major city on the Japan Sea coast, in the rhetoric surrounding the presentation of empire and region in its exposition that spring.

Liverpool's designation as European Capital of Culture for 2008, together with the 800th anniversary of the founding of the borough in 2007, has (unsurprisingly) generated a number of books dealing with different aspects of the city's history. The five volumes reviewed here represent just a small selection of those available, ranging from the deliberately academic to much more popular publications. Together they provide much of interest for urban historians. If these books have a common theme it is the argument (or assumption) that for much of its history, and in many different respects, Liverpool was (and remains) in various ways different from other British cities. The celebration of difference lies very much at the heart of Liverpool's Capital of Culture activities, and these books provide additional perspectives on Liverpool's demographic, social, cultural, sporting and architectural distinctiveness.