A good choice for anyone interested in how troubled neighborhoods are policed and conflicts mediated.
A street-smart sociologist looks at gang warfare in Chicago as a machine that, once set in motion by various forces, is hard to stop.
Intergang turf wars are fueled by many pipelines. In the case of one South Side Chicago neighborhood, one of those pipelines is the willingness, even avidity, of rural folks to sell guns to city kids who drive “downstate” to procure their arsenals. Case in point is a gangster named Harpoon, who in one visit “purchased fifteen used handguns from a rural family that has gathered up the cache from neighbors.” As Venkatesh shows, though, there are other factors. The author writes about one imprisoned drug dealer in particular, who was busted not just for drugs, but for having enough weapons to make the police nervous. Fearing that rival dealers were trying to seize his territory and that his teenage crew on the streets wasn’t tough enough to defend it, he ordered his lieutenant to take down suspected rivals. The lieutenant decided his victim would be a high schooler he had been bullying. Consequently, that kid, hitherto fairly well behaved and nondescript—“Ordinary never got no one in trouble,” his parents have instructed—was pushed into assembling a gang and getting guns for himself. Add to this the jailed dealer’s Machiavellian conclusion that a shooting war would be good precisely because it would bring down the police and keep those rival dealers away for fear of being arrested, and you have the makings of mayhem. The eventual resolution is an unexpected but inspired part of Venkatesh’s ethnography, involving clergy, a peacemaker of a police officer, and not least some of the teenagers who willingly laid down their arms. Even the imprisoned dealer contributed something positive, telling one of them, “If I was you, I’d get the fuck out.”
A good choice for anyone interested in how troubled neighborhoods are policed and conflicts mediated.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9439-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.
Portraits in a post-pandemic world.
After the Covid-19 lockdowns left New York City’s streets empty, many claimed that the city was “gone forever.” It was those words that inspired Stanton, whose previous collections include Humans of New York (2013), Humans of New York: Stories (2015), and Humans (2020), to return to the well once more for a new love letter to the city’s humanity and diversity. Beautifully laid out in hardcover with crisp, bright images, each portrait of a New Yorker is accompanied by sparse but potent quotes from Stanton’s interviews with his subjects. Early in the book, the author sequences three portraits—a couple laughing, then looking serious, then the woman with tears in her eyes—as they recount the arc of their relationship, transforming each emotional beat of their story into an affecting visual narrative. In another, an unhoused man sits on the street, his husky eating out of his hand. The caption: “I’m a late bloomer.” Though the pandemic isn’t mentioned often, Stanton focuses much of the book on optimistic stories of the post-pandemic era. Among the most notable profiles is Myles Smutney, founder of the Free Store Project, whose story of reclaiming boarded‑up buildings during the lockdowns speaks to the city’s resilience. In reusing the same formula from his previous books, the author confirms his thesis: New York isn’t going anywhere. As he writes in his lyrical prologue, “Just as one might dive among coral reefs to marvel at nature, one can come to New York City to marvel at humanity.” The book’s optimism paints New York as a city where diverse lives converge in moments of beauty, joy, and collective hope.
A familiar format, but a timely reminder that cities are made up of individuals, each with their own stories.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250277589
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
