Ben Austen's High-Risers braids personal narratives, city politics, and national history to tell the timely and epic story of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green, America’s most iconic public housing project. 

In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Austen tells the story of America’s public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of American cities. The account is related movingly through the lives of residents who struggled to make a home for their families as powerful forces converged to accelerate the housing complex’s demise. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and full of moving portraits, High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing is a sweeping exploration of race, class, popular culture, and politics in modern America that brilliantly considers what went wrong in our nation’s effort to provide affordable housing to the poor—and what we can learn from those mistakes.

After the talk, Mr. Austen will sign copies of the book, which will be available for purchase.

For more information, visit our website: https://www.newberry.org/03272018-high-risers-cabrini-green-and-fate-american-public-housing

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