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2020 J. ANTHONY LUKAS PRIZE WINNER

From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here , a richly textured, heartrending portrait of love and death in Chicago's most turbulent 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 the close-up, empathic reporting that made There Are No Children Here a modern classic, Kotlowitz offers a piercingly honest portrait of a city in turmoil. These sketches of those left standing will get into your bones. This one summer will stay with you.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prelude To A Summer (p. 1)
• Chapter 1 May 4-The Tightrope, a story in four parts (p. 13)
• Chapter 2 May 12-Mother's Day (p. 18)
• Chapter 3 May 23-A Conversation: The OGs (p. 40)
• Chapter 4 May 31-Tightrope, part two (p. 49)
• Chapter 5 June 13-The Tweets (p. 62)
• Chapter 6 June 16-Father's Day (p. 74)
• Chapter 7 June 24-The Witnesses, part one (p. 91)
• Chapter 8 July 5-The (Annotated) Eulogy (p. 99)
• Chapter 9 July 8-I Ain't Going Nowhere, part one (p. 105)
• Chapter 10 July 14-Going Home (p. 126)
• Chapter 11 July 17-Day of Atonement (p. 149)
• Chapter 12 July 25-The Two Geralds (p. 180)
• Chapter 13 August 15-The Tightrope, part three (p. 199)
• Chapter 14 August 17-Artifacts (p. 203)
• Chapter 15 August 22-I Ain't Going Nowhere, part two (p. 213)
• Chapter 16 August 24-This is What He Remembers (p. 224)
• Chapter 17 August 29-The Disco Tour (p. 243)
• Chapter 18 August 31-The Witnesses, part two (p. 257)
• Chapter 19 September 8-The Tightrope, part four (p. 269)
• Chapter 20 September 19-False Endings (p. 277)
• A Note on Reporting (p. 281)
• Acknowledgments (p. 285)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

An American Summer Excerpted from Prelude to a Summer Near midnight on August 19th, 1998, the phone rang, an unusual occurrence at my parents' home in upstate New York where I was visiting with my wife and infant daughter. I got out of bed, and scrambled to the hallway to grab the phone. The voice on the other end sounded familiar but I couldn't quite place it. "It's Anne Chambers," she said. Anne was a Chicago violent crimes detective whom I knew. She told me she was calling from the kitchen in our home in Oak Park, a suburb bordering Chicago. She told me that Pharoah was there with her, and that he may have been involved in a murder. My legs buckled. I sat down to catch my breath. This was the Pharoah from my book There Are No Children Here, a boy who tread cautiously, who loved school and who was so charming and vulnerable that adults went out of their way to protect him. Shortly after the book came out, Pharoah, who had grown up in one of the city's housing projects, had moved in with me - for what I thought would be a short period. I'd helped get him into Providence St. Mel, a college prep school on the city's west side, and he was struggling, understandably. He couldn't find quiet in his first-floor public housing apartment as rivers of people flowed in and out daily, mostly family and family friends. He called and told me he just wanted to catch up with his school work. Could I be stay with you, for just for a while ? he asked. Maybe a week or two ? I was single at the time, unencumbered and with a spare bedroom, so I invited him to stay. Though only 12, he knew what he needed. He brought with him a garbage bag filled with clothes - and his school backpack. Those two weeks turned into six years. When I got married, Pharoah walked my wife Maria down the aisle - along with her dad. We moved to Oak Park as we wanted to be near his school, and we figured it was a community that wouldn't look askance at this unusual arrangement. His adolescent years were rocky. I didn't anticipate how this living situation would pull at his sense of identity. While his mother, LaJoe, supported his decision to live with Maria and me, others in his family didn't. One time, his mother called and after leaving a message forgot to hang up, and so on my answering machine I listened to a five-minute rant by a friend of their family berating LaJoe for letting Pharoah live with a white couple. He don't belong there , the woman told LaJoe. He ain't white . I knew it had to be hard for Pharoah. He undoubtedly heard these harangues, as well. It's tough enough to be a teen in the best of circumstances, grappling with who you are and who you want to be, and here Pharoah had to figure out who he was while living with two white adults who were not related to him by blood, who were not his parents, who were not even his legal guardians. In particular, he had an older brother - I gave him the pseudonym Terence in the book - who clearly resented Pharoah's decision to live with us, and so he would try to pull Pharoah into his activities in the street. There was also a measure of opportunism here as he knew Pharoah, who had never been in trouble with the law, would not likely draw the attention of the police. It felt like a tug of war, and I often felt on the losing end. At one point, Pharoah knew he had to get away, to find some reprieve from these forces pulling at him, and so at his request we sent him to a boarding school in Indiana, a military academy where he had attended summer camp. A week after he left, I was tidying up his bedroom, picking clothes off the floor, making his bed and finally cleaning his closet, where on the top shelf I noticed a worn black leather bag the size of a medicine ball. I reached to pull it down. It was bloated with cash. I mean lots of cash. Tens. Twenties. Hundreds. All of it stuffed into the bag without much concern for appearance or organization. I knew right away that it belonged to Terence, that he had probably asked Pharoah to hold it for him. I called a friend, an attorney, for advice. His words were simple: "Get rid of it." He called me back a few minutes later, and clarified, "I don't mean throw it away." So, I called Terence, and told him I had something of his which he needed to retrieve. He refused to come to Oak Park, worried that I'd set him up with the local police so I agreed to meet him on the city's West Side, and there in the middle of a one-way, residential street in the early afternoon, in the open so that we both felt protected, exchanged what turned out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000. (Terence later accused me of taking $300 from the bag, but that's another story.) This is what Pharoah was up against - and what we were up against, as well. Pharoah got kicked out of the boarding school for selling marijuana, and eventually graduated from our local public school. He was accepted at Southern Illinois University and had decided not to visit New York with us during this summer trip because he wanted to get ready for school. Classes began the following week. And then I got this call. I knew the detective, Anne Chambers, from my time reporting There Are No Children Here. Anne, whom everyone in the neighborhood called Mary (for reasons I never could discern), had been a member of the plainclothes tactical unit in the neighborhood, and had a reputation as a fair-minded officer. She was tough, but cared deeply about the kids. She was a single mother, and we use to talk about her son, who at the time was headed off to Harvard with ambitions to be a police officer. She pleaded with him to do something different. Here's what she told me in that short midnight phone call: Pharoah had taken a taxi from our house to his mother's home on the West Side, and when the cab pulled up two young men pulled Pharoah out of the backseat, and then jumped in. One of them held a pistol to the cabbie's head, demanding his money. The cabbie must have panicked, and when he pressed down on the accelerator one of the assailants shot him in the back. Anne told me that some detectives suspected Pharoah might have set up the driver. Fortunately, Anne knew Pharoah from her time in the projects, and knew that he wasn't that type of kid. I told her I, too, couldn't fathom Pharoah pulling such a stunt - though privately I worried that maybe his brother had put him up to it. By the next morning, Anne and her colleagues had determined that in fact Pharoah knew nothing of the robbery. Pharoah's sister saw much of what transpired, and could identify the assailants. For my part, I tried to reach Pharoah. This was before cell phones. His mother said he was out, but wasn't sure where. I tried calling regularly throughout the day. Both Maria and I were concerned. He'd just seen someone murdered. It wasn't the first time, I knew, but I also imagined how disorienting it must be. Morning came and went. As did the afternoon. Finally, that evening I reached him at our house. Where have you been ? I asked. Shopping. Shopping? At Marshall Field's. For school. Shopping? I was incredulous. Yeah. Pharoah, how are you doing? Okay. Why? Why? You just saw someone murdered. I'm okay. I got to go. I need to get packed for school. I hung up, shaking my head. I was dumbfounded - and angry. How could he not be grieving? How could he not be upset? Shopping? I told my wife if it was me, I'd be curled up on our couch in a fetal position. I thought to myself, something must be terribly wrong with Pharoah. How can you not feel? How can you not cry? How can you not express gratitude for not getting killed yourself? Pharoah gets yanked out of the backseat of a taxi by two men with a pistol, and then watches as they shoot and kill someone he'd just shared time with. Something, I thought, was off. Out of kilter. And for the longest time, I thought Pharoah was without heart, that he'd become hardened if not numb to the violence around him. This of course is the mistake we all make, thinking that somehow one can get accustomed to it. I feel like I've been working my way to this book for a long while. In reporting There Are No Children Here , it was the violence that most unmoored me. Since the publication of the book in 1991, four of the kids I befriended have since been murdered, including Pharoah's nephew whom even at the age of 21 everyone called Snugs, short for Snuggles. He was killed in retaliation for someone else getting shot; he was the last person murdered before the Henry Horner Homes were razed. Another young man, Jojo Meeks, had joined me, along with Pharoah and his brother Lafeyette, on a fishing trip one summer. He had a smile so wide you felt like you could just walk right in. Jojo became a stick-up artist, of drug dealers mostly, and was killed when he tried to rob some drug dealers with a bb gun. They were better armed. The numbers are staggering. In Chicago, in the twenty years between 1990 and 2010, 14,033 people were killed, another 63,000 wounded by gunfire. And the vast majority of these shootings took place in a very concentrated part of the city. Let me put this in some perspective, if perspective is possible; it's considerably more than the number of American soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Combined. And here's the thing, Chicago is by no means the most dangerous city, not even close. Its homicide rate doesn't even put it in the top ten. But the city has become a symbol for the personal and collective wreckage caused by a kind of civil war raging in the streets of the nation's most impoverished neighborhoods. Citizens killing citizens, children killing children, police killing young black men. A carnage so long lasting, so stubborn, so persistent that it's made it virtually impossible to have a reasonable conversation about poverty in the country, and has certainly clouded any conversation about race. One friend who worked for a local anti-violence organization - the fact that such groups even exist speaks volumes to the profound depth of the problem - calls it "a madness." What's going on? Let me tell you what this book isn't. It's not a policy map or a critique. It's not about what works and doesn't work. Anyone who tells you they know is lying. Consider that in Chicago, the police have tried community policing, SWAT teams, data to predict shooters, full saturation of troubled neighborhoods, efforts to win over gang members. And the shootings continue. Anti-violence gurus insist they have the answers. I've seen one - the founder of a local program - take credit for the reduction of shootings in the years before his organization even existed. What works? After twenty years of funerals and hospital visits, I don't feel like I'm any closer to knowing. And so, what you have here, in these pages, is a set of dispatches, sketches of those left standing, of those emerging from the rubble, of those trying to make sense of what they've left behind. A summer in the city. 2013. There's nothing special about this particular summer other than it's the one I chose to immerse myself in. Over the course of three months, 172 people were killed, another 793 wounded by gunfire. By Chicago standards it was a tamer season than most. Excerpted from An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here) examines the seemingly endless violence that continues to touch those living in Chicago's neediest neighborhoods, interviewing loved ones, bystanders, advocates, victims, and perpetrators alike to make sense of an increasingly dire and complicated situation. Recorded over the course of a three-month period during the summer of 2013 when 172 people were killed and 793 were wounded by gunfire, Kotlowitz paints an intimate portrait of life in the city, never diminishing the fear and anxiety that runs through each account. Kotlowitz treats each of his sources with dignity and grace, shedding light on the influence of loss, poverty, privilege, and lack of opportunity on gun violence and gang culture. VERDICT Kotlowitz weaves a message of survival and remembrance that encourages readers to take a hard look at violence and justice in America. A powerful selection for anyone interested in social policy, gun violence, and social justice.-Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Journalist Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here) examines the epidemic of violent crime in Chicago through the events of the summer of 2013, narrating the stories of victims and their families, social workers, and perpetrators. A high school student and former gang member's one-night spree of violence threatens to run his entire future off-course. A mother finds the strength to forgive her son's killer, arguing on his behalf in court. A teen haunted by a friend's death at a birthday party watches helplessly as another friend is gunned down. A man spends a "day of atonement" each year on the anniversary of the day he took a life, visiting with victims of violent crime. A witness to a teenager's death comes forward to tell the victim's mother that police officers shot her son and planted a gun at the scene. Kotlowitz has a ruminative, almost poetic sensibility, describing for example how "the acronym RIP... is everywhere... tattooed on people's bodies... scrawled on the sides of buildings. Embossed on T-shirts and jackets. It's as if these communities are piecing together the equivalent of a war memorial." The violence is made palpable but never romanticized. Kotlowitz's approach is empathetic in this a bold, unflinching depiction of an ever-lengthening crisis. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Kotlowitz is an immersion journalist of the highest order, spending years investigating complicated, anguished, and unjust predicaments. He conducts hundreds of intensely personal interviews, embedding himself in people's lives as they cope with loss and adversity. Chicago has been his primary turf, most famously in There Are No Children Here (1991), the watershed book about public-housing projects, which was designated by the New York Public Library as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century. Since its publication, four of the children Kotlowitz became close to have been murdered. Their deaths are part of a horrific Chicago statistic: "between 1990 and 2010, 14,033 people were killed, another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire." Kotlowitz set out to document how this tragic plague of street violence derails, burdens, and poisons lives for generations. He chose to chronicle in factual and psychological detail the carnage of one summer in Chicago, that of 2013, which, he ruefully observes, is considered one of the tamer seasons, during which 172 people were killed and 793 wounded. Kotlowitz's self-assigned mission was to trace the web of havoc, grief, fear, anger, and helplessness engendered by the bloodshed ravaging woefully undersupported African American and Hispanic communities. He spoke with people in their homes and workplaces, neighborhood restaurants and hangouts, courts and jails, listening with profound receptivity, respect, and sympathy, and becoming deeply involved himself. His account introduces readers to mothers mourning murdered children and devastated by shame and guilt over sons responsible for violence, and to shooting survivors left physically paralyzed or afflicted with debilitating depression. The wellspring for this consummate inquiry into chronic urban violence is Kotlowitz's work on the Emmy-winning documentary film The Interrupters (2011), which features activists with CeaseFire, a violence-prevention group, among them Eddie Bocanegra. A guiding light in these pages, Eddie has spent most of his life trying to atone for a murder he committed at age 17, when he was pulled into the maelstrom of retaliatory gang bloodshed. As Eddie served time, earned college degrees, and devoted himself to helping others, he realized that people in his neighborhood were as shattered by street combat as his war-veteran brother was by his service in Iraq, inspiring him to found Urban Warriors, which brings together military and civilian PTSD sufferers to help each other heal. Kotlowitz writes with masterful economy and concreteness, and from his meticulous narrative springs a rich spectrum of emotions like light reflecting off high-rise windows. In addition to confiding conversations, Kotlowitz was also granted access to journals and letters, including the extraordinarily noble correspondence between an incarcerated killer and the mother of his victim. Each individual Kotlowitz so intimately profiles captures one's heart. There is young Thomas, whose best friend, Shakaki, was killed while they talked on a front porch; and there is Anita, the devoted social worker who gives her all to help Thomas overcome his despair. Another unforgettable chapter portrays a man who finally gets out of prison and joyfully reunites with his son, who soon after is fatally shot in a case of mistaken identity. Kotlowitz recounts stories of people who are threatened or killed for going to the police or testifying in court, vanquishing the myth that people in high-crime neighborhoods don't cooperate with the authorities because of some sort of code of loyalty. Unjustified shootings by police further banish trust and hope. Kotlowitz's hard-hitting and powerfully clarifying dispatches bring into the light people who love their families and friends and who work hard to take care of others, yet who are undermined, betrayed, and brutalized by violence, racism, poverty, and an unconscionable lack of understanding, caring, resources, and social and political will. Kotlowitz writes, It's my hope that these stories will help upend what we think we know. It is our hope that this book will be widely read and discussed.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A chronicle of dreams and gun violence one summer in the city of Chicago.In 1991, Kotlowitz (Journalism/Northwestern Univ.; Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago, 2004, etc.) published the modern classic There Are No Children Here (1991), which told the story of brothers Lafeyette and Pharoah and their experiences in one of Chicago's violent housing projects. Years later, the author received a call in the middle of the night and learned that Pharoah may have been involved in a murder. In his latest powerful sociological exploration, the author masterfully captures the summer of 2013 in neglected Chicago neighborhoods, rendering intimate profiles of residents and the "very public" violence they face every day. One example is Eddie Bocanegra, who killed a rival gang member as a teenager. "Eddie did the unimaginable," writes Kotlowitz. "He took another human life. I suppose for some that might be all you need to know. For others, it may be all you want to know about him. And that's what Eddie fears the most, that this moment is him. That there's no other way to view him." We also meet Anita Stewart, a dedicated social worker who watched one of her favorite students get murdered and another struggle with the aftermath. Heartbreakingly, the author writes early on, "I could tell story after story like this, of mothers who drift on a sea of heartache, without oars and without destination." Throughout, Kotlowitz raises significant issues about the regions where violence has become far too routine. "After the massacre at Newtown and then at Parkland we asked all the right questions," he writes. However, "in Chicago neighborhoods like Englewood or North Lawndale, where in one year they lose twice the number of people killed in Newtown, no one's asking those questions." Kotlowitz offers a narrative that is as messy and complicated and heart-wrenching as life itself: "This is a book, I suppose, about that silenceand the screams and howling and prayers and longing that it hides."A fiercely uncompromisingand unforgettableportrait. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.