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Title details for High-Risers by Ben Austen - Available

High-Risers

by Ben Austen
ebook
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A Booklist Best Book of the Year: "The definitive history of the life and death of America's most iconic housing project," Chicago's Cabrini-Green (David Simon, creator of The Wire).
Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to twenty-three towers and a population of 20,000—all of it packed onto just seventy acres a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Eventually, Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource—it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed.
In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Ben Austen tells the story of America's public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of American cities. It is an account told movingly though the lives of residents who struggled to make a home for their families as powerful forces converged to accelerate the housing complex's demise. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and full of moving portraits, High-Risers is a sweeping exploration of race, class, popular culture, and politics in modern America that brilliantly considers what went wrong in our nation's effort to provide affordable housing to the poor—and what we can learn from those mistakes.
"Compelling." —Chicago Tribune
"[A] fascinating narrative." —Booklist (starred review)
"A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community." —Kirkus Reviews
"Austen has masterfully woven together these deeply intimate stories of the residents at Cabrini against the backdrop of critical public policy decisions. Ultimately this book is about how as a country we acknowledge and deal with the very poor." —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
Named a Best Book of the Year by Mother Jones
Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction; the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize; and the Chicago Review of Books Award
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Publisher: HarperCollins
Awards:

Kindle Book

  • Release date: March 19, 2024

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9780062235084
  • File size: 752 KB
  • Release date: March 19, 2024

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780062235084
  • File size: 2128 KB
  • Release date: March 19, 2024
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Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

History Politics Sociology Nonfiction

Languages

English

A Booklist Best Book of the Year: "The definitive history of the life and death of America's most iconic housing project," Chicago's Cabrini-Green (David Simon, creator of The Wire).
Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to twenty-three towers and a population of 20,000—all of it packed onto just seventy acres a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Eventually, Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource—it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed.
In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Ben Austen tells the story of America's public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of American cities. It is an account told movingly though the lives of residents who struggled to make a home for their families as powerful forces converged to accelerate the housing complex's demise. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and full of moving portraits, High-Risers is a sweeping exploration of race, class, popular culture, and politics in modern America that brilliantly considers what went wrong in our nation's effort to provide affordable housing to the poor—and what we can learn from those mistakes.
"Compelling." —Chicago Tribune
"[A] fascinating narrative." —Booklist (starred review)
"A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community." —Kirkus Reviews
"Austen has masterfully woven together these deeply intimate stories of the residents at Cabrini against the backdrop of critical public policy decisions. Ultimately this book is about how as a country we acknowledge and deal with the very poor." —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
Named a Best Book of the Year by Mother Jones
Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction; the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize; and the Chicago Review of Books Award
Expand title description text
History Politics Sociology Nonfiction
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