MARCH 2018 - AudioFile
Author Ben Austen and narrator Ron Butler create something special in this outstanding examination of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. Butler captures the characters of residents, cops, housing officials, and others. Austen gives him much to work with—the audiobook is about the people of Cabrini-Green as much as it is about the buildings and politics and policies. What Austen and Butler do so well is counter the worn narrative of Cabrini-Green as a place of urban blight, poverty, and violence. There also were communities of people striving for a place in the world. This is a fine, sympathetic portrait of a place and its people, both of which have long been overshadowed by myth and stereotype. G.S.D. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
10/16/2017
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.)
From the Publisher
Ben Austen’s High-Risers is not merely the definitive history of the life and death of America’s most iconic housing project, but a clear-eyed assessment of what happened to public housing as a national ideal and why it happened.” — David Simon, creator of The Wire
“Austen writes with a lyrical, poetic affection for the four main characters. Here we see there are as many Cabrini-Green origin stories as there were people living in Cabrini-Green. To merely stereotype is to willfully ignore each resident’s humanity. Austen deftly tells the stories of Wilson, Fleming, Cannon and another woman, Annie Ricks, without distance, bringing readers intimately into their lives. It is compelling writing, sure to separate Austen’s work from other, more anthropological examinations of Cabrini-Green.” — Chicago Tribune
“Ben Austen has emerged over the last five years as one of the most serious and thoughtful new American reporters. He writes with a deceptively smooth and borderline conversational style that keeps pages turning, but he has something rarer, too: the patience to keep with a subject until it yields up unfamiliar questions. This book was years in the making and in some way Austen’s whole life in the making. In it a neighborhood becomes a character, a protagonist, but the character has inside it real human beings. Austen convinced me that my understanding of what goes on inside ‘the projects’ had been about as deep as a cop show. We need more books like this from him.” — John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead
“[Austen] ties the history of Cabrini-Green to broad economic, political, and social trends that played a pivotal role in the creation and undoing not only of Cabrini-Green, but also of much of America’s public housing… [presenting] the history of Cabrini-Green in such a way that invites subtle questions with no easy answers… The high-rises are gone and, in time, the high-risers will go with them. But the lessons of Cabrini-Green still weigh on us all.” — South Side Weekly
“Provides many powerful insights…A weighty and robust history of a people disappeared from their own community.” — Kirkus
“[High-Risers] is a finely crafted biography of an urban community.” — Library Journal Advance Review
“….a local history of profound national relevance… Austen’s fascinating narrative demands much consideration.” — Booklist (starred review)
“The passages about Cabrini-Green residents, interspersed among chapters about the history of the projects, take the reader into the drama of life in African-American communities…Austen combines archival work with empirical research. The hundreds of hours he spent interviewing the residents of Cabrini-Green often give his prose the depth of a novel.” — New York Review of Books
South Side Weekly
[Austen] ties the history of Cabrini-Green to broad economic, political, and social trends that played a pivotal role in the creation and undoing not only of Cabrini-Green, but also of much of America’s public housing… [presenting] the history of Cabrini-Green in such a way that invites subtle questions with no easy answers… The high-rises are gone and, in time, the high-risers will go with them. But the lessons of Cabrini-Green still weigh on us all.
Chicago Tribune
Austen writes with a lyrical, poetic affection for the four main characters. Here we see there are as many Cabrini-Green origin stories as there were people living in Cabrini-Green. To merely stereotype is to willfully ignore each resident’s humanity. Austen deftly tells the stories of Wilson, Fleming, Cannon and another woman, Annie Ricks, without distance, bringing readers intimately into their lives. It is compelling writing, sure to separate Austen’s work from other, more anthropological examinations of Cabrini-Green.
David Simon
Ben Austen’s High-Risers is not merely the definitive history of the life and death of America’s most iconic housing project, but a clear-eyed assessment of what happened to public housing as a national ideal and why it happened.
New York Review of Books
The passages about Cabrini-Green residents, interspersed among chapters about the history of the projects, take the reader into the drama of life in African-American communities…Austen combines archival work with empirical research. The hundreds of hours he spent interviewing the residents of Cabrini-Green often give his prose the depth of a novel.
John Jeremiah Sullivan
Ben Austen has emerged over the last five years as one of the most serious and thoughtful new American reporters. He writes with a deceptively smooth and borderline conversational style that keeps pages turning, but he has something rarer, too: the patience to keep with a subject until it yields up unfamiliar questions. This book was years in the making and in some way Austen’s whole life in the making. In it a neighborhood becomes a character, a protagonist, but the character has inside it real human beings. Austen convinced me that my understanding of what goes on inside ‘the projects’ had been about as deep as a cop show. We need more books like this from him.
Booklist (starred review)
….a local history of profound national relevance… Austen’s fascinating narrative demands much consideration.
Chicago Tribune
Austen writes with a lyrical, poetic affection for the four main characters. Here we see there are as many Cabrini-Green origin stories as there were people living in Cabrini-Green. To merely stereotype is to willfully ignore each resident’s humanity. Austen deftly tells the stories of Wilson, Fleming, Cannon and another woman, Annie Ricks, without distance, bringing readers intimately into their lives. It is compelling writing, sure to separate Austen’s work from other, more anthropological examinations of Cabrini-Green.
MARCH 2018 - AudioFile
Author Ben Austen and narrator Ron Butler create something special in this outstanding examination of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing projects. Butler captures the characters of residents, cops, housing officials, and others. Austen gives him much to work with—the audiobook is about the people of Cabrini-Green as much as it is about the buildings and politics and policies. What Austen and Butler do so well is counter the worn narrative of Cabrini-Green as a place of urban blight, poverty, and violence. There also were communities of people striving for a place in the world. This is a fine, sympathetic portrait of a place and its people, both of which have long been overshadowed by myth and stereotype. G.S.D. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-11-12
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.
