The devastating story of brothers Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, children of the Chicago ghetto, is powerfully told here by Kotlowitz, a Wall Street Journal reporter who first met the boys in 1985 when they were 10 and seven, respectively. Their family includes a mother, a frequently absent father, an older brother and younger triplets. We witness the horrors of growing up in an ill-maintained housing project tyrannized by drug gangs and where murders and shootings frequently occur. Lafayette tries to cope by stifling his emotions and turning himself into an automaton, while Pharoah first attempts to regress into early childhood and then finds a way out by excelling at school. Kotlowitz's affecting report does not have a ``neat and tidy ending. . . . It is, instead, about a beginning, the dawning of two lives.'' These are lives at a crossroads, not totally without hope of triumphing over their origin. ( Apr .
The author of “Evicted” talks about his new book and how a wave of home loss is altering America, perhaps permanently. A conversation with Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
Two acclaimed authors discuss reporting shocking stories of inner-city children in peril, and The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace.
Ask any of our booksellers what they love most about their jobs, and you’ll hear a chorus of voices say, “Recommending books we love to other readers.” Our booksellers read deep into specific categories or widely across genres; they never stop talking about the books that broke their minds wide open, the stories they can’t […]
Announcing the 2017 Discover Awards Finalists One of the best parts of a bookseller’s gig is championing up-and-coming writers, and one of the ways we do that here at B&N is with our Discover Great New Writers program, which includes our annual Discover Awards. The Discover selection committee is made up of B&N booksellers from […]