High-risers Cabrini-Green and the fate of American public housing

THE OVERSTORY, by Richard Powers. (Norton, $27.95.) The science of botany and the art of storytelling merge to ingenious effect in Powers's magisterial new novel - a story in which people are merely the underbrush and the real protagonists are the trees that the human characters encounter. STRAY CITY, by Chelsey Johnson. (Custom House, $25.99.) Among the delights of this engrossing debut novel, about a single young lesbian mother, is how clearly Johnson delineates the psychosexual dualities and prejudices of our culture - how effortlessly she instructs even as she entertains. THINKING WITHOUT A BANISTER: Essays in Understanding, 1953-1975, by Hannah Arendt. Edited by Jerome Kohn. (Schocken, $40.) Arendt's urbane and unceremonious style is in full display in these essays from the last two decades of her life. Many of the pieces deal with political events and intellectual issues of the time, but they retain a striking relevance in the Age of Trump. THE SANDMAN, by Lars Kepler. Translated by Neil Smith. (Knopf, $27.95.) In this Nordic noir thriller, with resonant echoes of "The Silence of the Lambs," two Swedish cops can only crack their case by befriending an imprisoned serial killer. TO CHANGE THE CHURCH: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, by Ross Douthat. (Simon & Schuster, $26.) This book, together with two of Douthat's previous books, is one part of a loose triptych about institutions in decline. Here, Douthat, a convert to Catholicism as well as a columnist for The New York Times, focuses on what he sees as a crisis of the church, brought on by the accommodationist policies of Pope Francis. CLOUDBURSTS: Collected and New Stories, by Thomas McGuane. (Knopf, $34.95.) People living on the fringes - loners and schemers - populate these brilliant and compulsively readable short stories. You may find yourself tearing through the book like a flash flood washing out a dirt road. THE GHOST NOTEBOOKS, by Ben Dolnick. (Pantheon, $25.95.) Dolnick doesn't employ screaming demons or blood-dripping walls in this well-crafted thriller about newlyweds who have moved into a decidedly creepy farmhouse. His brand of haunting is much more subtle - and much scarier. HIGH-RISERS: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing, by Ben Austen. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) This history of a notorious low-income development in Chicago shows how public housing became a symbol for policy gone awry. BE PREPARED, by Vera Brosgol. (First Second, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) In this winning graphic novel based on the author-illustrator's childhood, 8-year-old Vera, a Russian immigrant, longs to go to sleepaway camp like her American friends. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

*Starred Review* Austen's impressive study of Chicago's 23-tower Cabrini-Green public housing project, razed but its legacy looming still, was conducted during years of reporting and interviewing. Like Alex Kotlowitz's seminal There Are No Children Here (1992), which chronicled the lives of two brothers living in Chicago's Henry Horner homes yet was not solely the story of one family, building, or city, Austen offers a local history of profound national relevance. Built over the site of a notorious slum on Chicago's Near North Side, the high-rises accepted their first residents in 1956, when a spot in public housing felt like a leap into the middle class. Throughout his painstaking chronology of the housing project and parallel Chicago and U.S. history, Austen intersperses biographies of several former residents. Highlighting these many-faceted lives and the care Cabrini residents took to safeguard and improve their part of an ever-changing neighborhood, Austen examines the finger-pointing and buck-passing among power players that gravely impacted the most vulnerable occupants. While Cabrini became a symbol of urban blight and ideological failure, for its residents it was, for all its recognized faults, more good than bad because it was home. As the buildings' demolition, completed in 2011, has left former residents in worse and more precarious situations, Austen's fascinating narrative demands much consideration.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2018 Booklist

In his first book, journalist Austen surveys the development and demise of Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project through the stories of four African-American residents who lived there at various points in their lives, beginning in the 1950s and up until the building's demolition in 2011. Together their stories span the tenures of 10 mayors and illustrate Cabrini-Green residents' slide into overwhelming poverty, as well as the disintegration of the community and the rise of crime there, exemplified in the shooting of two policemen, James Severin and Anthony Rizzato, in 1970, and the shooting of seven-year-old Dantrell Davis in 1992. Cabrini-Green-and particularly its demolition-has been the subject of much media attention; Austen examines that treatment in newspaper accounts, as well as in several films and documentaries, which by and large perpetuate a one-dimensional view of the horrors of inner-city life. Austen is an expert on his subject, and the narrative at times feels bloated with an excess of his experience and research. Nevertheless, urban planners in particular will find this an instructive guide, or, perhaps more importantly, a cautionary tale about a failed attempt to provide affordable housing for the poor. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The life, death, and diaspora of an American community.In a book that is part sociological study and part oral history, longtime journalist Austen takes a deep dive into the story of Cabrini-Green, an iconic American public housing project in Chicago. At its peak in the 1950s and '60s, Cabrini-Green was home to more than 3,600 families, predominantly African-American, "two-parent, working-class, and desperately in need of adequate housing." The author covers the relevant cultural, sociological, and political aspects of a place known as one of the "scariest black places in America." He also captures the flash points of the block's history, including the shooting of two policemen in 1970, the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old in 1992, and a brutal attack on 9-year-old "Girl X" in 1997. Admirably, Austen humanizes his story by telling it through the eyes of a handful of Cabrini-Green residents, including Dolores Wilson, a janitor's wife who became a political activist; Annie Ricks, who lived most of her life in Cabrini-Green; and J.R. Fleming, a peddler of counterfeit goods who learned to fight the injustice around him. "Reflecting on J.R.'s personal transformation, [a plainclothes cop] joked that his colleagues on the police force had messed up," writes the author. "They should have left the young man alone when he was just peddling DVDs and tube socks: Now they went and woke him up.' " Cabrini-Green is gone now, wiped out by a sweeping urban renewal program that demolished "every remaining public housing family high-rise, knocking down some 18,000 units." So Austen covers the diaspora, too, as an island of poverty was wiped from existence by white prosperity. It's a somewhat overstuffed history, but the author provides many powerful insights. As Dolores told her brother when offered an exit from Cabrini-Green, "I'm in the projects, but that's my home. I love my home just like you love your home."A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.