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. Chicago is a stew of contradictions: coarse yet gentle, idealistic yet restrained, grappling with its promise, alternately sure and unsure of itself. Not so much a tour of a place as a tour of its soul, Never a City So Real introduces listeners to some of the city's most interesting, if not always celebrated people.