I was looking for an image that felt both celebratory and contemplative. I know the terrain can be grim, but as the subtitle suggests, I found a lot of love in these stories. The Paul D’Amato photo on the dust jacket of “An American Summer” features a solitary black man, young, naked from the waist up, head bowed, the water on the horizon appearing almost like a sunburst. And though Kotlowitz has investigated and reported on a variety of places, Chicago is his primary canvas, and the place he returns to with his new book. His subsequent books and articles, as well as radio features and a documentary film, continued his pursuit of stories centered around people living in impoverished circumstances. His 1992 book, “There Are No Children Here,” in which he followed a family residing in the Henry Horner Homes, received widespread praise on its way to being recognized as one of the most important books of the twentieth century. Alex Kotlowitz spent five years working on “An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago,” and his long and illustrious career as a reporter-in newspapers, books, radio and film-foreshadowed what, finally, we would read. And more unusual still when that book exceeds expectations.

More unusual when that book concerns a topic as weighty and nuanced as urban gun violence. It’s unusual, with the velocity of books being published these days, when a new release is met with the pomp and circumstance of a literary happening.

An American Summer by Alex Kotlowitz