and also hand been heard multiple times on this american life.le he was won two peabodys, the robert f. kent journalism squared the george polk award. i this book is an american summer, love and death in chicago. and that book he reports that over the last two decade, about 14,000 people have been killed and roughly another 60,000 wounded by gunfire. it's kind of number that ick main you mind good blank. but alex makes those numbers personal. his stories unfold under the course of a single summer as he asked what does the staggering violence do to he people who live here. welcome him to the stage with me. [applause] >> what brought you to this book? >> so, in some ways it see this booking a book end to there nor children here, which i wrote nearly 30 yearsing and and that book chronicled two boys growing up in public housing, and i remember my very first time in the project, it was in the mid-'80s and i was visiting with the older of the two boys, lafayette, 12 years old, and the first -- i felt this deep sense of shame. you walk into the public housing, the conditions are so distresseds i t