The Other Side Of Prospect A Story Of Violence Injustice And The American City

A landmark work of intimate reporting on inequality, race, class, and violence, told through a murder and intersecting lives in an iconic American neighborhood. One New Haven summer evening in 2006, a retired grandfather was shot point-blank by a young stranger. A hasty police investigation culminated in innocent sixteen-year-old Bobby being sentenced to prison for thirty-eight years. New Haven native and acclaimed author Nicholas Dawidoff returned home and spent eight years reporting the deeper story of this injustice, and what it reveals about the enduring legacies of social and economic disparity. In The Other Side of Prospect, he has produced an immersive portrait of a seminal community in an old American city now beset by division and gun violence. Tracing the histories of three people whose lives meet in tragedy—victim Pete Fields, likely murderer Major, and Bobby—Dawidoff indelibly describes optimistic families coming north from South Carolina as part of the Great Migration, for the promise of opportunity and upward mobility, and the harrowing costs of deindustrialization and neglect. Foremost are the unique challenges confronted by children like Major and Bobby coming of age in their “forgotten” neighborhood, steps from Yale University. After years in prison, with the help of a true-believing lawyer, Bobby is finally set free. His subsequent struggles with the memories of prison, and his heartbreaking efforts to reconnect with family and community, exemplify the challenges the formerly incarcerated face upon reentry into society and, writes Reginald Dwayne Betts, make this “the best book about the crisis of incarceration in America.” The Other Side of Prospect is a reportorial tour de force, at once a sweeping account of how the injustices of racism and inequality reverberate through the generations, and a beautifully written portrait of American city life, told through a group of unforgettable people and their intertwined experiences.

A reconstruction of Nicholas Dawidoff's grandfather, Alexander Gerschenkron-the Harvard professor who knew the most.

May 20, 1969: Four members of the revolutionary Black Panther Party trudge through woods along the edges of the Coginchaug River outside of New Haven, Connecticut. Gunshots shatter the silence. Three men emerge from the woods. Soon, two are in police custody. One flees across the country. Nine Panthers would be tried for crimes committed that night, including National Chairman Bobby Seale, extradited from California with the aide of Panther nemesis, California Governor Ronald Reagan. Activists of all denominations descended on the New England city -- and the campus of Yale. The Nixon administration sent 4,000 National Guardsmen. U.S. military tanks lined the streets outside of New Haven. In this white-knuckle journey through a turbulent America, Doug Rae and Paul Bass let us eavesdrop on late-night meetings between Yale President, Kingman Brewster, and radical activists, including Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, as they try to avert disaster. Meanwhile, most heartrending of all is the never-before-told story of Warren Kimbro -- star community worker turned Panther assassin -- who faces an uphill battle to turn his life around.

A VITAL NEXT CHAPTER IN THE ONGOING CONVERSATION ABOUT RACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA When he was in his early twenties, William Juneboy Outlaw iii was sentenced to eighty-five years in prison for homicide and armed assault. The sentence brought his brief but prolific criminal career as the head of a forty-member cocaine gang in New Haven, Connecticut, to a close. But behind bars, Outlaw quickly became a feared prison “shot caller” with 100 men under his sway. Then everything changed: His original sentence was reduced by sixty years. At the same time, he was shipped to a series of America’s most notorious federal prisons, where he endured long stints in solitary confinement—and where transformational relationships with a fellow inmate and with a prison therapist made him realize that he wanted more for himself. Upon his release, Outlaw took a job at Dunkin’ Donuts, began volunteering in New Haven, and started to rebuild his life. Now an award-winning community advocate, he leads a team of former felons in negotiating truces between gangs on the very streets that he once terrorized. The homicide rate in New Haven has decreased by 70 percent in the decade that he’s run the team—a drop as dramatic as in any city in the country. Written with exclusive access to Outlaw himself, Charles Barber’s Citizen Outlaw is the unforgettable story of how a gangleader became the catalyst for one of the greatest civic crime reductions in America, and an inspiring argument for love and compassion in the face of insurmountable odds.

Growing up in a doomed hometown with a missing father and a single mother, Nicholas Dawidoff listened to baseball every night on his bedside radio, the professional ballplayers gradually becoming the men in his life. A portrait of a childhood shaped by a stoical, enterprising mother, a disturbed, dangerous father, the private world of baseball, and the awkwardness of first love, The Crowd Sounds Happy is the moving tale of a spirited boy's coming-of-age in troubled times.

“In an Ivy League town, Bloom turns Yale’s motto—Lux et Veritas—on its head, finding darkness and deceit in every corner of New Haven.” —Kirkus Reviews The image of a charming college town serves New Haven well, but its natives know that the city has been built on a rich—and violent—history that still seeps out from between the cracks in the sidewalks and the halls of learning. Now, New York Times–bestselling author—and Connecticut resident—Amy Bloom masterfully curates a star-studded cast of contributors, featuring Michael Cunningham, Stephen L. Carter, and Roxana Robinson, to portray New Haven’s underbelly. Highlights of the anthology include Lisa D. Gray’s “The Queen of Secrets,” which won the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award and John Crowley’s “Spring Break,” winner of the Edgar Award for Best Short Story. Tales by Alice Mattison, Chris Knopf, Jonathan Stone, Sarah Pemberton Strong, Karen E. Olson, Jessica Speart, Chandra Prasad, David Rich, Hirsh Sawhney, and Bloom herself round out this impressive collection. “Town-gown tensions highlight several of the 15 stories in this stellar Akashic noir anthology set in the Elm City . . . This [volume] is particularly strong on established authors, many of whom have impressive credentials outside the genre.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “The anthology brings together writers who take varied approaches to the idea of noir in the Elm City. Some stories are historical, some are contemporary. All the classic New Haven landmarks are there, including plenty of Yale . . . The full sweep of New Haven’s character is on display in the anthology.” —Connecticut Magazine

From bestselling author Gary Krist, a vibrant and immersive account of New Orleans’ other civil war, at a time when commercialized vice, jazz culture, and endemic crime defined the battlegrounds of the Crescent City Empire of Sin re-creates the remarkable story of New Orleans’ thirty-years war against itself, pitting the city’s elite “better half” against its powerful and long-entrenched underworld of vice, perversity, and crime. This early-20th-century battle centers on one man: Tom Anderson, the undisputed czar of the city's Storyville vice district, who fights desperately to keep his empire intact as it faces onslaughts from all sides. Surrounding him are the stories of flamboyant prostitutes, crusading moral reformers, dissolute jazzmen, ruthless Mafiosi, venal politicians, and one extremely violent serial killer, all battling for primacy in a wild and wicked city unlike any other in the world.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry’s stunning internationally acclaimed bestseller, is set in mid-1970s India. It tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a “State of Internal Emergency.” Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances – and their fates – become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen. Mistry’s prose is alive with enduring images and a cast of unforgettable characters. Written with compassion, humour, and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured, and powerful novel written by one of the most gifted writers of our time.