An American Summer by Alex Kotlowitz

An American Summer by Alex Kotlowitz

From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here, a richly textured, heartrending portrait of the impact of violence on Chicago's most vulnerable neighborhoods.

The numbers are staggering: over the past twenty years in Chicago, 14,033 people have been killed and another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire. What does that do to the spirit of individuals and community? Drawing on his decades of experience, Alex Kotlowitz set out to chronicle one summer in the city, writing about individuals who have emerged from the violence and whose stories capture the capacity--and the breaking point--of the human heart and soul. The result is a spellbinding collection of deeply intimate profiles that upend what we think we know about gun violence in America. Among others, we meet a man who as a teenager killed a rival gang member and twenty years later is still trying to come to terms with what he's done; a devoted school social worker struggling with her favorite student, who refuses to give evidence in the shooting death of his best friend; the witness to a wrongful police shooting who can't shake what he has seen; and an aging former gang leader who builds a place of refuge for himself and his friends.
Applying close up, empathic reporting, Kotlowitz offers a piercingly honest portrait of a city in turmoil. These sketches of those left standing will get into your bones.

Alex Kotlowitz is the author of the national blockbuster There Are No Children Here, which was named one of the 150 most important novels of the twentieth century by the New York Public Library. The Other Side of the River, his second book, won the Heartland Award for Nonfiction. He won an Emmy and a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary for his documentary film The Interrupters. Two Peabody honors, two duPont-Columbia University awards, and a George Polk Award have been given to Kotlowitz's writing, which has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and on public radio's This American Life. He is a Northwestern University writer-in-residence. Just north of Chicago, Kotlowitz lives with his wife, Maria Woltjen, and their two children, Mattie and Lucas.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385538800
ISBN 10	0385538804
Title	An American Summer
Author	Alex Kotlowitz
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Nan A. Talese
Year published	2019-03-05
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.