Chicago is one of America’s most iconic, historic, and fascinating cities. For Alex Kotlowitz, an accidental Chicagoan, it is the perfect perch from which to peer into America’s heart. It’s a place, as one historian has said, of “messy vitalities,” a stew of contradictions: coarse yet gentle, idealistic yet restrained, grappling with is promise, alternately sure and unsure of itself.

Chicago, like America, is a  kind of refuge for outsiders. It’s probably why Alex Kotlowitz found comfort there. He’s drawn to people on the outside who are trying to clean up – or at least make sense of – the mess on the inside. Perspective doesn’t come easy if you’re standing in the center. As with There Are No Children Here, this is not so much a tour of a place as a chronicle of its soul, its lifeblood. Never a City So Real is a tour of the people of Chicago, who have been his guides into this city’s – and by inference, this country’s – heart.