Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz

Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz

Chicago is a tale of two cities, headlines declare. This narrative has been gaining steam alongside reports of growing economic divisions and diverging outlooks on the future of the city. Yet to keen observers of the Second City, this is nothing new. Those who truly know Chicago know that for decades--even centuries--the city has been defined by duality, possibly since the Great Fire scorched a visible line between the rubble and the saved. For writers like Alex Kotlowitz, the contradictions are what make Chicago. And it is these contradictions that form the heart of Never a City So Real.

The book is a tour of the people of Chicago, those who have been Kotlowitz's guide into this city's - and by inference, this country's - heart. Chicago, after all, is America's city. Kotlowitz introduces us to the owner of a West Side soul food restaurant who believes in second chances, a steelworker turned history teacher, the Diego Rivera of the projects, and the lawyers and defendants who populate Chicago's Criminal Courts Building. These empathic, intimate stories chronicle the city's soul, its lifeblood.

This new edition features a new afterword from the author, which examines the state of the city today as seen from the double-paned windows of a pawnshop. Ultimately, Never a City So Real is a love letter to Chicago, a place that Kotlowitz describes as a place that can tie me up in knots but a place that has been my muse, my friend, my joy.

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	9780226619019
ISBN 10	022661901X
Title	Never a City So Real
Author	Alex Kotlowitz
Series	Chicago Visions And Revisions
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	2019-05-16
Number of pages	168
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.