From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here, An American Summer a richly textured, heartrending portrait of love and death in Chicago’s most turbulent neighborhoods. Author Alex Kotlowitz takes the reader into the heart of these communities, interviewing the families and friends of the victims of gun violence, as well as the victims themselves, putting faces and people behind the statistics. “This will be one of my top non-fiction recommendations for 2019,” a reviewer commented in goodreads.com. In a review published in the The New York Times, Eric Klinenberg said that An American Summer “is a powerful indictment of a city and a nation that have failed to protect their most vulnerable residents, or to register the depth of their pain.” Klinenberg added: “It is also a case study in the constraints of a purely narrative approach to the problems of inequality and social suffering. Kotlowitz aims to tell unforgettable stories about the afterlife of homicide, how it penetrates the minds, bodies and communities of those it touches.” Kotlowitz grew up in New York City. His father, Robert, is the author of four novels and a memoir of World War II Before Their Time.