The Guardian journalist Simon Hoggart has a priceless anecdote from this year’s Edinburgh Festival. At a concert at the city’s Usher Hall, the leader of his group conscientiously turns her mobile to silent, leaving a red LED glowing. At the end of the concert, as she gets up to leave, an Edinburgher turns to her and hisses: ‘your red light completely ruined the concert for me.’ For those of us who have to endure the city’s eccentricities year round, it’s a familiar story. Hoggart’s story was, in an unintentional way, pure Sennett: in a single story an index of some favourite problems: civility, etiquette, how we behave in public.

How we behave publicly with each other, and how specifically we co-operate is the subject of Sennett’s latest book Together, whose title is as much an aspiration as it is a description. It’s a subtle, touching, funny, clever book, perfect…