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Title details for Never a City So Real by Alex Kotlowitz - Available

Never a City So Real

A Walk in Chicago

by Alex Kotlowitz
Scott Brick
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
The acclaimed author of There Are No Children Here takes us into the heart of Chicago by introducing us to some of the city's most interesting, if not always celebrated, people.
Chicago is one of America's most iconic, historic, and fascinating cities, as well as a major travel destination. For Alex Kotlowitz, an accidental Chicagoan, it is the perfect perch from which to peer into America's heart. It's a place, as one historian has said, of "messy vitalities," a stew of contradictions: coarse yet gentle, idealistic yet restrained, grappling with its promise, alternately sure and unsure of itself.
Chicago, like America, is a kind of refuge for outsiders. It's probably why Alex Kotlowitz found comfort there. He's drawn to people on the outside who are trying to clean up—or at least make sense of—the mess on the inside. Perspective doesn't come easy if you're standing in the center. As with There Are No Children Here, Never a City So Real is not so much a tour of a place as a chronicle of its soul, its lifeblood. It is a tour of the people of Chicago, who have been the author's guides into this city's—and in a broader sense, this country's—heart.
From the Hardcover edition.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 31, 2004

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415952801
      • File size: 110431 KB
      • Duration: 03:50:03

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      In warm tones, the author unfolds his visions and memories of the great city of Chicago, "first settled by people running from failure...America's original pioneer town." In a breezy read full of anecdotes, Kotlowitz is our audio tour guide. Introducing neighborhoods and their denizens, he aims his audio camera for character close-ups and cityscape wide shots. As a reader, his style is much like someone voicing a guest NPR segment. He's clearly not a professional reader, but he's not so hampered by inhibitions that he becomes tedious or cold. The recording might be improved by some local ambient sounds or a sampling of local music and voices to give it more color. D.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      Chicago, the author marvels, is "a practical place--a city of necessity," perennially in transition because it is never satisfied with itself. The awe that pervades the heart and mind of this longtime resident is reflected in the passion of his voice as he extols a town "where man has actually beaten nature. . . a stew of contradictions, coarse yet gentle, idealistic yet restrained." Beginning with his larger-than-life father-in-law, a social activist-hustler-salesman-inventor, Kotlowitz offers beguiling word portraits of such types as a politically charged steelworker, an inner-city muralist, a public defender with a dramatic flair that wins advocates and enemies, and a miniaturist who paints portraits of the denizens of scruffy bars, "a world of desolate dignity." All told, the human hodgepodge of the teeming pot that is still melting emerges fully fleshed and hauntingly evoked in this reading. M.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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