There Are No Children Here: The story of two boys growing up in the other America (or There Are No Children Here for short), is written by Alex Kotlowitz. Kotlowitz grew up around New York City. He attended Wesleyan University in Connecticut. After graduating from Wesleyan, he worked on a cattle ranch and finally, after a year, started working at a journalism firm in Lansing, Michigan. He later became a popular writer for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. It also has works from the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, etc. He has won numerous awards for his work, and once he moved to Chicago, he began research for his best-selling book, There Are No Children Here. I believe that since Kotlowitz writes/has written for so many national magazines and three other books he is well qualified. There are no children here, it's a book about two brothers who live in Henry Horner's houses. The names of the two brothers are Lafeyette Rivers and Pharoah Rivers. Both live in the inner city of Chicago and try to survive. The chronology of the book is from the summer of 1987 to September 1989. The author met the boys while writing an article in Chicago Magazine. The article was about poverty and he met them through a social service agency. Kotlowitz described a photo he was taking of Lafeyette, saying the photo "looked like there were a lifetime's horrors bottled up inside him." After Kotlowitz wrote his article, he left and returned again to write another article about the boys for the Wall Street Journal. He stayed with them all summer and became good friends with the River boys and their mother. To this day they are still friends and usually go out together every weekend. After a year of being without... middle of paper ...... take away the broken windows effect. I'm also sure that no police officers patrol the area because of the danger to them. If they started patrolling the neighborhood more heavily, they could potentially stop gangs and crime. Personally I support his thesis. He wanted to show us how difficult life was in the inner cities. I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee, in the northern part of Milwaukee County. I know how difficult it is for people from the inner city, just from talking to some of my classmates who came by bus from the city. They told me stories I could imagine. My uncle is also a police officer on the south side of Milwaukee and he tells me stories too. I think Kotlowitz makes a great point and tells the story perfectly of how tough life is in downtown Chicago. Personally, I would love to reread this book when I have time over the summer.