In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time

by Peter Lovenheim

Overview

Based on a popular New York Times Op-Ed piece, this is the quirky, heartfelt account of one man's quest to meet his neighbors—and find a sense of community.

**As seen in Parade, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Chicago Sun-Times, and more.

**Winner of the Zocalo Square Book Prize, and recently named a first selection by Action Book Club.


"It's impossible to read this book without feeling the urge to knock on neighbors' doors." 
-Chicago Sun-Times 


Journalist and author Peter Lovenheim lived on the same street in suburban Rochester, NY, most of his life. But it was only after a brutal murder-suicide rocked the community that he was struck by a fact of modern life in this comfortable enclave: No one knew anyone else.

Thus begins Peter's search to meet and get to know his neighbors. An inquisitive person, he does more than just introduce himself. He asks, ever so politely, if he can sleep over.

In this smart, engaging, and deeply felt book, Lovenheim takes readers inside the homes, minds, and hearts of his neighbors and asks a thought-provoking question: Do neighborhoods matter—and is something lost when we live among strangers?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399536472
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/05/2011
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.57(w) x 8.24(h) x 0.67(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Peter Lovenheim is a journalist whose articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, New York magazine, and other publications. He teaches writing at Rochester Institute of Technology and is also the author of Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf, a firsthand attempt to understand the food chain, and other books. He lives in Brighton, New York, a suburb of Rochester.

Table of Contents

Introduction xv

1 Waking at Lou's 1

2 "A Considerable Trauma" 38

3 Footprints 66

4 The Top of Their Games 80

5 No Bed, No Breakfast 102

6 The Woman in the Castle 122

7 Motion Sickness 150

8 A Father Ten Feet Tail 164

9 Misdirected Mail 190

10 Connections 203

Epilogue 227

Sources/Resources 237

Editorial Reviews

"The people Lovenheim meets have great backstories, and his life is enriched by his efforts. It's impossible to read this book without feeling the urge to knock on neighbors' doors."
-Chicago Sun-Times

"A disarmingly straightforward approach to its subject...Lovenheim does his modest best to create neighborly bonds where none existed, with quiet but real results."
-Washington Post Book World

"It is hard to read this book and not think of your own neighborhood, your own street. Who do you know? Everyone? Anyone? No one at all?"
-Minneapolis Star Tribune

"This book, so gentle and unassuming on the surface, is in fact deeply radical. If we all took its lessons to heart, our world would be a different, and better, place."
-Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and The Air We Breathe

"The appeal of In the Neighborhood is hard to resist, and Lovenheim's interactions with his own neighbours are always interesting...."
-Winnipeg Free Press

"Lovenheim advances ideas about isolation in the modern world, and why a welcoming front porch is needed now more than ever."
-Booklist

"Mr. Lovenheim's 'neighborhood' is a place where no one knows anyone else-like so many neighborhoods today. In this warm and intimate book, he gets to know the strangers who are his neighbors and shows how a community can be transformed by the power of human connections."
-Marc Silver, author of Breast Cancer Husband

"In the Neighborhood is a big book in sheep's clothing: it insists on posing the boldest questions about our everyday American lives, but does so personably and mildly. We accompany this insistently wide-eyed author on a series of neighborhood sleepovers, and come face to face with our own insularity."
-Mark Kramer, co-editor of Telling True Stories and former director of the Nieman Program on Narrative Journalism at Harvard University

"This book will awaken your inner sociologist. In the Neighborhood is an inspirational reminder that for all our collective bemoaning about the loss of community, the solution is only a knock on the door away."
-Prof. Keith N Hampton, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher

What the book lacks in drama—murder-suicide excepted—it makes up for in a disarmingly straightforward approach to its subject. Lovenheim finds that his neighbors have very little to hide. He uncovers no signs of drug or child abuse, no sexual peccadilloes, no criminal rings, just folks trying to live their lives as best they can. What's remarkable is how seldom those lives intersect.
—The Washington Post

Jennifer Howard

You may share a wall or a street; you may be able to tell, from the number of cars in their driveway, if their daughter is home from college. But are they truly your neighbors? If you needed help, could you count on them? Ten years ago, Lovenheim noticed television trucks and ambulances outside a neighbor's home. He soon learned that the man who lived there had killed his wife and then himself. Lovenheim is haunted by the fact that he knew so little about this family, who had been his neighbors for seven years. This event spurred Lovenheim to get to know his neighbors, which to him meant spending a full 24 hours in their company as they go about their days and nights. These unusual visits form the basis for his provocative book.

Readers accompany Lovenheim on his sleepovers, meeting a retired surgeon, a single mom battling cancer, a young couple, and others, as well as the local mail carrier and newspaper deliverer. Also woven into the text is research about neighborhood design and community building. Sadly, we learn that Lovenheim's murdered neighbor, sensing she was in danger, called a friend in another town. Would things have been different if she'd felt comfortable enough to phone a neighbor? In the Neighborhood leaves you wondering: How well do I know my neighbors? And should I know them better? Read the book before the film. Julia Roberts has optioned it!

Social history reporting can get dull in the abstract; happily, journalist and family man Lovenheim (Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf) makes a personal project of his investigation into the disappearance of community in suburban American, learning about the residents of his suburban Rochester, N.Y. street by sleeping over at their houses (his impetus was a murder-suicide on the street that helped reveal the extent to which his neighbors remained strangers). Throughout, Lovenheim's writing is genteel and elegantly detailed, revealing much about his subjects-issues of class, relationships, likes and gripes, obsessions and everyday struggles-that would be easy to miss in broad cultural assessments. His project also exposes the surprising variety of people in a neighborhood that seems, at first glance, a homogenous group of upper-middle-class professionals. Using the sleepover as an innovative sociological lens, Lovenheim provides a smart, from-the-front-lines update on Robert Putnam's suburban-alienation expose Bowling Alone, taking a personal look at what Americans tend to lose by "going about their lives largely detached from those living around them."
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