Ira Gershwin English-language programs to primarily Hispanic and Chinese Americans. Ira and his younger brother George spent many after-school hours at the Settlement. The George and Ira Gershwin Collection is at the Library of Congress Music Division. The Edward Jablonski and Lawrence D. Stewart Gershwin Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds a number of Ira's manuscripts and other material. In 2007, the United States Library of Congress named its Prize for Popular Song after him and his brother George. Recognizing the profound and positive effect of American popular music on the world's
What They Always Tell Us the novel opens a few months after he drank Pine-Sol in an apparent suicide attempt. James is a senior who is presented as the exact opposite of Alex. James is ambitious, popular and athletic. The story takes place over the school year and chronicles the brothers fulfilling school and family obligations, befriending a lost and isolated neighborhood boy, and the brothers repairing their own relationship with one another. The chapters switch back and forth between Alex and James' perspective, giving reader access to both of their thoughts and desires. "What They Always Tell Us" was generally well received by critics.