Alex Kotlowitz

This New York Public Library selection as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century is a true-life portrait of growing up in the Chicago projects. This national best-seller chronicles the true story of two brothers coming of age in the Henry Horner public housing complex in Chicago. Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers are eleven and nine years old when the story begins in the summer of 1987. Living with their mother and six siblings, they...

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...

The moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who, with bravado, humility, and even humor, try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. Shot over the course of a year, this documentary captures a period in Chicago when it became a national symbol for the violence in America's cities.