Meet author and social critic Alex Kotlowitz as he talks about his latest book about Chicago, Never a City So Real. Chicago is one of America’s most iconic, historic, and fascinating cities. It’s a place, as one historian has said, of “messy vitalities,” a stew of contradictions: coarse yet gentle, idealistic yet restrained, grappling with is promise, alternately sure and unsure of itself. As with There Are No Children Here, this is not so much a tour of a place as a chronicle of its soul, its lifeblood. Never a City So Real is a tour of the people of Chicago, who have been his guides into this city’s – and by inference, this country’s – heart.

This program was presented as part of the 2009 Bughouse Square Debates.

Recorded Saturday, July 25, 2009 at Washington Square Park.