The Human Face of American Decline

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Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here, published in 1991, helped define an entire genre of writing. Its immersive story of two brothers growing up in a housing project in Chicago was also the story of an American underclass contending daily with violence, drug abuse, and poverty. Kotlowitz allowed his subjects’ lives to unfold as if they were in a realist novel. He was attuned to character and narrative and the smallest, most intimate detail. In the decades since, many other authors have pursued Kotlowitz’s approach to depicting social issues from the ground up. Kotlowitz himself wrote for us this week about a new book, Benjamin Herold’s Disillusioned, which tells another largely ignored tale about the slow death of the suburbs. Once the emblem of the American dream, the resources and infrastructure of many outer-ring communities have now been depleted, leaving their newer residents—mostly Black and brown families—“with the waste and debris of their prosperity,” Kotlowitz writes. Herold follows five families experiencing this transformation and what it has wrought. Because he admired the book so much, I thought I’d take the opportunity to ask Kotlowitz about other titles that manage to operate at a human scale while arriving at bigger truths.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Gal Beckerman: What are some books you love that put a face on a social problem, as you’ve done so well in your own work?

Alex Kotlowitz: I’m drawn to nonfiction narratives that feel intimate, even small, but that—as you read on—you come to realize say something much larger. I think of this as the bigness of the small story. Katherine Boo does this so deftly in Behind the Beautiful Forevers. This book makes you think anything’s possible. It reads like a novel and, as you get more and more immersed in this slum outside Mumbai, as you become more and more invested in the slum’s residents, as you get lost in its streets, you come to realize that, hey, this isn’t just a story of this one community; it’s the story—the sordid story—of globalization. It’s almost as if the smaller the story gets, paradoxically, it also gets bigger. There are others who have done this so beautifully as well. Melissa Fay Greene in Praying for Sheetrock, or Tracy Kidder in Strength in What Remains, or Matt Desmond in Evicted, or, more recently, Evan Osnos in Wildland. There are younger writers, too, who are emerging. (Full disclosure: Many of these authors are friends, but this is a reasonably small community—and we are incredibly supportive of one another’s work.) Ben Austen’s Correction, a searing book about parole, or Jessica Goudeau’s After the Last Border, about the fate of refugees in America. They all have the sense to know there’s nothing more powerful than a good story, and to know that in that story, we will come to grapple with some of the great issues of the day.

Beckerman: Any books that specifically point to issues in America to which we’re not paying enough attention (maybe especially in this election year)?

Kotlowitz: I find myself often looking for books that give me some hope, that remind me what it means to fight back. Especially in this rather bleak moment in time, I need some bolstering. There are books that I can’t let go of, stories that I’ve leaned on in years past. Kevin Boyle’s National Book Award–winning Arc of Justice, about a case Clarence Darrow fought in Detroit in the early 20th century, has stayed with me, as has Gary Rivlin’s Fire on the Prairie, a riveting account of the election of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor. I have on my shelves a well-worn copy of Harry Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands, which I return to every now and again. And then, of course, there’s Tony Lukas’s Common Ground, which, when I read it as a fledgling journalist, I thought to myself, This is what I want to do.

Beckerman: I wonder if there is any fiction in this vein that feels particularly important to you.

Kotlowitz: I actually read more fiction than nonfiction, but I look to it not to immerse me in the moment but rather to take me away. Give me a good novel, and I’ll disappear—and the world around me disappears as well. These are some that I’ve been recommending lately: The Sojourn, by Andrew Krivak, which is the first in a trilogy. I love all three books, but this is my favorite; I’ve bought probably a dozen copies for friends. I recently somewhat hesitantly picked up Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. The story takes place in the world of gaming, in which I have zero interest—or at least that’s what I thought. This book wouldn’t let me go; I devoured it. Anything and everything by Jesmyn Ward—is there a better writer and storyteller out there today? A few others I’ve been passing on to friends: Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans, Maaza Mengiste’s Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, and the novella Zorrie, by Laird Hunt.

Beckerman: Is there one book you find yourself regularly thrusting upon younger writers and reporters who want to do the kind of immersive work you’ve done?

Kotlowitz: Every year at Northwestern, I teach a course I call “Journalism of Empathy”—and every year, the first reading I assign my students is John Hersey’s Hiroshima. I’ve probably read it half a dozen times. It’s a triumph of reporting and empathy. It sets the bar so damn high. And the thing I still can’t quite grasp is that Hersey reported this book in three weeks. Three weeks! I feel like a sloth next to him.

The Suburbs Have Become a Ponzi Scheme

What to Read

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, by James Nestor

Breath is a book-length argument for a relatively simple idea: You should breathe through your nose. I’m a chronic mouth breather—I frequently can’t inhale through my nose at all because of severe allergies. (One time I got called out in yoga class because we were doing alternate-nostril breathing, which I was physically incapable of doing, and the teacher thought I was ignoring his directions on purpose.) But Nestor argues that nose-breathing is crucial because it’s more efficient and, weirdly, might even promote a better skeletal structure in your mouth. I haven’t taken things as far as Nestor does in the book; I don’t tape my mouth shut or anything. But occasionally, when I’m running, I’ll remind myself to try to breathe through my nose, and it kind of helps me keep going. Another bad habit of mine is to hold my breath for long periods of time while I’m working. After reading Breath, I’m now more likely to forcibly take in a sip of air if I notice I haven’t in a while. Breathing! Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.  — Olga Khazan

From our list: A book that changed how I think

Out Next Week

📚 Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis, by Jonathan Blitzer

Your Weekend Read

The Uncanniest Influencers on the Internet

Algorithms can be teasingly tautological, responding to users’ behavior and shaping it at the same time. That can make them particularly challenging to talk about. “The algorithm showed me,” people commonly say when explaining how they found the TikTok they just shared. “The algorithm knows me so well,” they might add. That language is wrong, of course, and only in part because an algorithm processes everything while knowing nothing. The formulas that determine users’ digital experiences, and that decide what users are and are not exposed to, are elusively fluid, constantly updated, and ever-changing. They are also notoriously opaque, guarded like the trade secrets they are. This is the magic Clarke was talking about. But it hints, too, at a paradox of life in an age of digital mediation: Technology is at its best when it is mysterious. And it is also at its worst.