In this highly acclaimed book (the basis of a new HBO miniseries, produced by David Simon, creator of The Wire), Lisa Belkin brings to life a landmark public housing case in Yonkers, New York in riveting detail. What began with a judge's order to build scattered-site public housing in middle-class neighbourhoods, ended in the near destruction of a city - sparking prejudices, fanning emotions into flame and eventually leading to murder and suicide. Belkin's sympathetic portrait of the people at the centre of this crisis - hopeful, fearful, greedy, manipulative, the gamut of human behaviour - is gripping to its powerful, redemptive end.

'Lisa Belkin was able to carefully dissect the failure of an American city to come to terms with the simple and inevitable fact that great societies learn how to share, or they cease to be great societies. All of the stories in Show Me A Hero - from the politicians to the housing residents to the homeowners to the lawyers and city planners - are in these pages, ready to speak to us, not merely as a cautionary tale, but as a paradigm for healing' David Simon

'Belkin so successfully evokes the city and its people that the reader is caught up in the battle . . . Show Me a Hero is a rich, well-told story' Chicago Tribune