Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
An American Summer
An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago | Alex Kotlowitz
10 posts | 15 read | 12 to read
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 of 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 in your bones. This one summer will stay with you.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
blurb
Kshakal
post image
Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks 📚👍🏻📚 1y
Eggs Perfection 👌🏼😱❤️ 1y
33 likes2 comments
blurb
TracyReadsBooks
post image

Today‘s portable reading…

#OutAndAbout #ReadingOnTheTrain #Nonfiction

review
Karmapen
Pickpick

It‘s hard to “like” a book like this, which is just a chronicle of tragedies— but it was so close and intimate and didn‘t pretend to be anything it wasn‘t. It spent time with the people affected and let them say their piece and didn‘t try to lionize or demonize them. I was impressed and sad. I wanted to keep reading forever.

review
rigo.padilla
Pickpick

An amazing snapshot into a violent summer in Chicago. The story focuses on the summer of 2013, but strattles in the past and post. It intersects the poverty, lack of affordable housing, sustainable employment and divestment that #Chicago has taken the past few decades.

quote
rigo.padilla

"People have a capacity to keep going even when their world has been shattered. We all long for connection, for affirmation that our lives matter."

review
Christine
post image
Pickpick

The overwhelming violence in Chicago is often examined from a structural point of view - as well it should be, because it‘s tied to so many complicated systemic issues. But sometimes that reduces the individuals affected to stereotypes (like victim, perpetrator, gang member, witness) that don‘t reflect that complexity. This book tells many Chicagoans‘ rich, multilayered stories with great empathy - super valuable data for changemakers.

47 likes1 stack add
review
JoyBlue
post image
Pickpick

My League of Women Voters book club is discussing this on Tuesday. We'll also have a guest speaker who is (or was) principal of a high school in Chicago. It should be an interesting presentation and discussion.

The book is, of course, really difficult in terms of topic. The author presents devastating social justice issues, without hitting the reader over the head. I hope that everyone who reads it gets it.

8little_paws 🙋‍♀️I work at Chicago high schools! Ask me anything :) 5y
JoyBlue @8little_paws Cool! Which school(s)? I went to Kenwood Academy. 5y
8little_paws One public and one private--ChiArts and Francis W. Parker. 5y
60 likes5 stack adds4 comments
review
watermelontaco13
post image
Pickpick

This book was eye opening and emotional. I found myself Googling names and putting a face to the story. Those stories were the most heartbreaking of all. Overall though, I highly recommend this book especially to Chicagoans.

review
AmberWB
post image
Pickpick

A few years ago, CNN showed a docuseries called Chicagoland. It highlighted the challenges being felt by that city and the people that were the most impacted. An American Summer does the same, only in book format. I feel that books like this are important. I see so much of my students in these stories. I only wish that I came away with a better idea of how to effect some type of change.

34 likes1 stack add
blurb
Becker
post image

Shocking amounts of gun violence. This problem is so big that it‘s really difficult to wrap your head around. This book isn‘t too political or technical. It is just a series of essays, each focusing on a different family that has had their lives ripped apart by this barbaric violence. It‘s about the people, not the policies. 😡

22 likes1 stack add