An American Summer by Alex Kotlowitz

AN AMERICAN SUMMER by Alex Kotlowitz: Our incoming students have read There Are No Children Here as part of the curriculum for more than a decade and this new work, sadly, offers additional impressions of “Love and Death in Chicago.” Kotlowittz writes, “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. … What works? After twenty years of funerals and hospital visits, I don’t feel like I’m much closer to knowing.”  Instead, in AN AMERICAN SUMMER, he seeks to share stories of those involved in the violence of “how amid the devastation, many still manage to stay erect in a world that’s slumping around them.  How, despite the bloodshed, some manage, heroically, not only to push on but also to push back.” The violence and despair is hard to read at times, but there is resilience, too, as Kotlowitz profiles twenty days, including Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, during the summer of 2013. The work is based on interviews with roughly 200 people over several years, reflections on his time embedded in a homicide unit, and numerous visits to homes, workplaces, jails, and court rooms.  AN AMERICAN SUMMER received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.