Product Details
Gangs: Stories Of Life and Death From the Streets

Gangs: Stories Of Life and Death From the Streets
From Da Capo Press

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Product Description

Gang life is both the starting point and the dark side of the American dream. Ethnic groups and immigrants have long turned to gangs for protection and support when it was offered nowhere else. From the Five Points to South Central L.A., Bowery Boys to Bloods and Crips, the James gang to gangsta rap, gangs offer a largely urban version of the American frontier: an opportunity and a refuge for society's outlaws, outcasts, and outsiders. Featuring superb writing drawn from the best fiction, nonfiction, and journalism, Gangs takes the reader on a tour of this underground, from accounts of New York's violent past by Herbert Asbury (The Gangs of New York) and Mark Helprin (A Winter's Tale) to Hunter S. Thompson's unflinching report from within the Hell's Angels and T. J. English inside America's most notorious Vietnamese gang. Other selections bring readers into the Irish, Italian, and Jewish Mobs as well as the Triads of America's Chinatowns, and chart the role of the vicious drug trade in contemporary gang life. With photographs and its wild and turbulent tour through the American underworld, Gangs paints a visceral and fascinating picture of a part of the American experience that is more nightmare than dream.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #1888789 in Books
  • Published on: 2002-09-01
  • Original language: English
  • Dimensions: 1.08 pounds
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 364 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
A growing social problem, gangs exist all over the United States, from the large urban areas where they are "expected" to the suburbs and even small towns. Journalist and editor Donahue has assembled an informative collection of articles and book excerpts, both fiction and nonfiction, from qualified authors who include Mark Helprin, Herbert Asbury, and Hunter S. Thompson. They discuss such topics as soccer hooliganism, national "super" gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips, skinheads and neo-Nazi groups, the early gangs found in New York City (e.g., Dead Rabbits), the criminal and deviant activities of gang members, female gangs, and the Mexican Mafia (Le Eme). They illustrate gangs' resistance to society's rules and how they create private worlds complete with elaborate codes (centered around a demand for respect), symbolism highlighted by graffiti, social rituals, and standards of expected behavior. This volume is not a comprehensive review of gang literature, but it does provide insightful supplemental information. Recommended for collections in criminology and deviant behavior.
Tim Delaney, Canisius Coll., Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
This excellent collection reveals the history and the humanity behind gang stereotypes. Excerpted from novels, memoirs, and journalism, the selections show a wide range of gang experience, including Vietnamese gangs, New York City's Jewish gangs of the early twentieth century, the highly publicized Bloods and Crips in L.A and El Rukin in Chicago, Mexican gangs from Southern California with deep ties to their home country. There are the football hooligans in Bill Buford's Among the Thugs; the neo-Nazi gangs in William Finnegan's fascinating Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country ; and the nightmarish world of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. Most of all, there are the personal stories that show life in the barrio, in the suburbs, in Manhattan, in Milwaukee. As Donohue writes in his introduction: "The best gangs stories are about people we recognize--maybe even people we know." This is a revealing, provocative collection that readers won't forget. Gillian Engberg
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