Reviews (1)

Fascinating Look at Gangs and Gang Enforcement
Fascinating look at the gang subculture and the means law enforcement people use to supress their criminal activity and protect the public.I was expecting a somewhat dry, clinical and technical treatment of the subject.Instead I found the book, well written, engaging and interesting.This is probably because the authors have years of proven real experience in gang enforcement, in a community noted for it's gang activity, and their writing style conveys the sense that they know what they are talking about. If I have any criticism of the book it would be that it is too short, particularly the material on gang culture and history. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Criminal Law - General    2. Criminal Procedure    3. Forensic Science    4. Gang prevention    5. Gang units    6. Law    7. Legal Reference / Law Profession    8. Police    9. Reference    10. United States    11. Criminal law    12. Jurisprudence & General Issues    13. Reference works   

Subjects:  1. Differential Equations    2. Differential Equations - Partial Differential Equations    3. Differential Geometry    4. Geometry - Differential    5. Mathematics    6. Partial Differential Equations    7. Science/Mathematics    8. Complex analysis    9. Differential & Riemannian geometry    10. Mathematics / General    11. Mathematics for scientists & engineers   

Reviews (2)

Baseball Nostalgia at it's best!
The best St Louis Cardinal book I've ever read. It is so detailed and fun. The writer - Doug Feldmann - does an outstanding job of covering all the bases in this wonderful release!

Wonderful for sports or history buffs!
Dizzy and the Gas House Gang was one of the best books I have read in years.I am an avid fan of baseball, but not quite enough of a fan to wade through some of the typical baseball books on the market--mired withstatistics and uninteresting details about flavor-of-the-month players. "Dizzy," however, is a rich account of one of the mostinteresting and arguably the best pitcher in baseball.A true gem forhistory buffs, sports fans, and romatics alike. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1911-    2. Baseball - History    3. Baseball - Specific Teams    4. Dean, Dizzy,    5. History    6. Sports    7. Sports & Recreation    8. St. Louis Cardinals (Baseball    9. St. Louis Cardinals (Baseball team)    10. Baseball    11. Inter-war period, 1918-1939    12. USA   

Subjects:  1. Case studies    2. Criminology    3. Gang members    4. Gangs    5. General    6. Group identity    7. Missouri    8. Social Science    9. Sociology    10. Sociology - Urban    11. St. Louis    12. Crime & criminology    13. Gang members--Missouri--St. Louis--Case studies    14. Social Science / Criminology    15. Social, group or collective psychology   

Subjects:  1. 1865-1883    2. 19th century    3. History    4. History - U.S.    5. History: American    6. Journalism    7. Media Studies - Print Media    8. Political History    9. Politics and government    10. Press and politics    11. United States    12. United States - General    13. American history    14. History / United States / 19th Century    15. USA    16. journalism; politicians; newspapers; Tweed Ring; media   

Editorial Review

Acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley spins a different yarn in Read more

Reviews (10)

Thought Provoking
When Walter Mosley wrote this essay, he intended it to make people think about the way things are, and the way things can change.However this book was not a one-sided rant, nor is just for African-Americans.This issues addressed in this essay, ranging from capitalism in America to voter apathy, reveal some profound insights and proposes soulutions to the problems brought forth.To many people this book will be an eye-opener; it certainly was for me.While I might not agree with the degree of some of Mr. Mosley's assertions, I recommend this book highly for anyone trying to gain a different perspective of the United States than what you see in the news or read in the paper.

Down with Capitalism!
�We [the working class] are marginalized by the profit of capitalism. We are footnotes to Citibank and the Mobil Oil Corporation and Chiquita Brands International (once know as the United Fruit Company).� --Walter Mosely putting the chains back on
This short, but overlong, book, which (God help us) comes from something called the Library of Contemporary Thought, offers pulp fiction writer Walter Mosley the opportunity to share his opinion on how to reform America culture and politics. Sadly, he proceeds to embarrass himself utterly. The chain gang of the title is his completely inapt metaphor for modern economic life. Imagine the disdain with which folks like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson,Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, and other genuine heroes of the fight for civil rights for blacks would greet Mosely's bizarre assertion that we are all enslaved in modern America : Everywhere I look I see chains, from the planned obsolescence that binds us to an endless line of ever more useless machines to captivating television shows about nothing to the value of the dollar bills insecurely nestled at the bottom of my pocket. For hundreds of years, Africans (an estimated 10 million) were captured, chained and sold; taken by force to America in the festering bowels of transport ships; sold again and enslaved by white masters; denied all rights and freedoms; forced to work from cradle to grave; beaten; raped; murdered; their families split apart on a whim. This entire system is a stinking blot upon the nation's honor, one which whites had a chance to expunge with the bloodshed and destruction of the Civil War, but which was immediately replenished when frightened and embittered Southerners, with the willing acquiescence of their Northern countrymen, imposed a system of apartheid on the newly freed black population. This time, the outrage of Jim Crow persisted until blacks themselves, in an awe inspiring display of moral and physical courage, used peaceful civil disobedience to shame white America into finally giving them the equal rights they'd long been promised. How can anyone compare this legacy of genuine and horrifying oppression to such trivial matters as overconsumption of appliances and watching too much Seinfeld ? Mosley actually has the temerity at one point to say that : "There is an echo of Jim Crow in the HMO..." One needn't love HMOs to recognize the difference between a mostly successful effort to provide cheap health care, on the one hand, and, on the other, the systematic and official enforcement of political and economic discrimination against an entire segment of the population based solely on the color of their skin. The effort to equate the two is so absurd as not to deserve to be taken seriously. Equally unserious is Mosely's prescription for what should be done to free us from the bondage of capitalism : (1) Take a self-imposed break from electronic media (though for some reason print media is allowed) (2) Tell the truth once a day. (3) Make a list of the things you demand from the system. Please... By the time he gets to his presidential platform you're unsure whether the whole book isn't just an elaborate hoax. Here's what he proposes : educate children; take care of the aged; pay doctors' medical malpractice premiums; educate more doctors and nurses; either legalize drugs or stop their importation into the country; have a conference on capital punishment; create rights to a living wage, health care, and an equal share in the Gross Domestic Product; and enter into international agreements to assure the same to all foreign workers too. As a candidate he would be some kind of weird melding of Bill Clinton, proposing only programs that everyone supports, and Lenin, reintroducing socialism. What's most surprising, or maybe not, about all of this, is that the radical egalitarianism that he envisions would essentially return him, and the rest of us, to the plantation. He calls it utopian, but at every step his politics requires that the freedom of some be curtailed in order to benefit others. In his great autobiography, Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington talks about the terror with which many newly freed blacks faced the prospect of freedom, after the Civil War. A people who had been completely, though involuntarily, dependent on the largesse of their masters was suddenly thrust out into the world and told to fend for themselves. How could this not have been frightening ? And, indeed, freedom, in the words of the old 60s slogan, isn't free. It requires that each of us take responsibility for ourselves and inevitably some will do better than others. But it is deeply discouraging that, some 150 years later--after a 20th Century in which his ideas were already tested and found to lead not to Utopia but to the Gulag--at least one of their descendants is no more prepared to leave the plantation than they were. There's a scene at the end of the movie version of Devil in a Blue Dress that is one of the most ineffably poignant in all of film. Ezekiel Rawlins (Denzel Washington) is standing in the street in front of his house, just looking around his middle class neighborhood. The viewer is achingly aware that where the scene depicts nuclear families, homeowners, workers, a people whose great achievement is to have survived all that the white man tried doing to them and to have built this community in the face of those odds, in just a few short years that was all destroyed by the presumably well-intentioned replacement of the ideal of self-reliance by a system of Big Government paternalism. You can't help but wonder if that community might have continued to thrive if they'd simply been left to themselves, rather than being submitted to the Great Society. What a high price was paid when freedom, however challenging, was replaced by security. Apparently, Mosley believes it's worth paying again. I beg to differ. GRADE : F ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Ethnic Issues    2. Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General    3. Minority Studies - Race Relations    4. Social Science    5. Sociology    6. Black studies    7. Racism & racial discrimination    8. Social Science / African-American Studies    9. USA   

Subjects:  1. Social Science    2. Sociology    3. Violence in Society    4. Social Science / Violence in Society   

Reviews (5)

"Like some Wild Cowboys coming 2 get me at highnoon": Jay-z
This book is an eye-opener 2 the underworld's violent reality for those from and not from the streets. The "Wild Cowboys" aka "Lenny's Boys"the legendary notorious street icons from "Washington Heights" aka "Home of the Haze" are shown in detail 4 the most part seperating fact from fiction.To some this book, based on the "Cowboys," canjustify their criminal exploits through the rebellious determination to achieve the status most minorities are denied, the Real American Dream, through sheer force and brutality by what all young and ambitious Dominicans, and minorities in general, can relate to which is The Code of the Streets.This book gives you a taste of the legend the next generation Dominican hears growing up now in Washington Heights. This book can villafy The Cowboys legendary criminal enterprise and unmerciful murederous tactics by showing the "priveleged" side of American society what must be done to "Live" as opposed to survive in the on-going struggle to achieve what the "Brady Bunch" etc. take 4 advantage. But all in all this book gives the reader a startling look in2 a ruthless "gang" and the grim reality of these New York streets. Where Hustlerz and killaz are the most visible successful role-models youngsterz get they can relate to. I hope this review shows you the realness contained in this book. P.S. the negative role-model answer is not getting rid of them because thats impossible, btw the war on drugz has not and will never work. The answer requires 2 much non-racist politics 2 exist in a social structure dominated by a race that will not sacrifice their luxury 4 our equality. So sadly the answer is in Sex, Drugz, and entertainment until we're even.
THE WILD WILD... EAST
This book tells the story in full detail and in murder after excruciating murder of how one gang in particular brought the primal fear, the lawlessness, and the insecurity of the wild west to the northern tip of Manhattan just over a decade ago.

Takes a lot of effort...
...to make a story about a quadruple homicide tedious!The author clearly logged a lot of hours researching this book, hanging out with cops.Nonetheless, the end result is a book book that would work well as a drinking game:Take a sip everytime the author introduces another name, another bit of non-essential info.Down your mug o' beer/glass of milk everytime the author reveals his pro-cop abuse of power bias.Read more

Subjects:  1. Criminology    2. Gangs    3. Hispanic American Sociology    4. Murder - General    5. New York    6. New York (State)    7. Organized Crime    8. Social Science    9. Sociology    10. True Crime / Espionage    11. Wild Cowboys (Gang)    12. American English    13. Causes & prevention of crime    14. Social Science / Criminology    15. True crime    16. USA   

Reviews (1)

a little dated, but still fascinating
This book was reprinted in 1991 and was a bit dated even then, as it contained little new information (the first edition was published in 1984.) Still, in her profiles of three very different women and the gangs theyassociate with, Campbell draws a clear picture of the limited choicesavailable to inner-city women. Should be read in tandem with Gini Sikes's"8-Ball Chicks" for an updated view of contemporary gang girls. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Case studies    2. Female Offenders (Criminology)    3. Female juvenile delinquents    4. Female offenders    5. Gangs    6. General    7. New York    8. New York (State)    9. Sociology    10. Adolescents    11. Children    12. Social, group or collective psychology    13. USA    14. Women's studies   

Subjects:  1. Baseball - General    2. Sports & Recreation   

Subjects:  1. California    2. Criminology    3. Gangs    4. Los Angeles    5. Mexican American criminals    6. Mexican Americans and drugs    7. Sociology   

Subjects:  1. Aims & Objectives    2. Education    3. Education / Teaching   

Reviews (2)

Not much to this book.
I am very disappointed in this book. It was poorly written. On and on throughout the whole book, all you heard about is we went here and we went there and sent this group or that group legging. All I ended up with from the book is a bunch of fractured ideas of a group that travels to football games. Ramblings on and on throughout the whole work - sure, at times there was good information, but it was never expanded on, ever. I want to know what the culture of the 'Soul Crew' was in depth. I want to know the feelings, the thoughts and the personalities of group members. I wanted description and tales of what goes on in such a group and all I got at best was a tiny tiny glimpse. It was a roller coaster throughout the whole book, they would just start to get interesting and then switch to a new topic and fizzle out the reading momentum. The authors say things like they were called the Soul Crew because most of the members deeply liked soul music and then they trail off to something totally different leaving the reader to ask why. What are the connections as to why the Soul Crew likes soul music? There needed to be some depth! This book could have been so much better! The topic is most interesting indeed! I really don't fault the authors for trying - but I must say, for 214 pages of reading I don't believe I got my money's worth. I'm sorry, but I can't recommend this book to others unless it is redone with a professional.

Why The Welsh Are Crap At Rugby
Engagingly told story of the violence as a pastime escapades of the Welsh soccer team Cardiff City's Soul Crew. There is a self-deprecating honesty to the book, since Tony and his hooligan mates don't win all their confrontations, and admit to being intimidated by opponents on several occasions. The designer label name dropping exemplifies the sartorial obsessions of the hooligan Casual scene, which appear to be as important as kicking the daylights out of some "up for it" blokes from another firm. The peculiar phenomenon of organized gangs of men (many into their 40s) attacking each other as a sport, in the name of a sport will strike many as repugnant and nihilistic. The sociologists and assorted boffins who attempt to mitigate this behavior by apportioning blame to 'lack of opportunities' and other throwaway vacuous slogans miss the point. Gangs like the Soul Crew exist purely because their members find acts of mass violence thrilling and cathartic. Tony Rivers & David Jones eloquently make this clear. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Other Miscellaneous Crimes    2. Soccer    3. Social History    4. Sociology    5. Sports & Recreation    6. Popular culture    7. Soccer (Association football)    8. Violence in society    9. Wales   

Subjects:  1. Bible - Commentaries - General    2. Current Affairs    3. Religion    4. Current Events / Law    5. Raddai Raikhlin   

Reviews (22)

Great Book For True Crime Fans!
Don't Call Us Molls: Women of the John Dillinger Gang
Interesting Topic and Great Read
As a member of Kathryn Kelly's family, I wanted to read this book as I knew there were a few mentions of her.I was immediately caught up in the story of the women of the Dillinger Gang.This book is well researched and captures the mood of the times. It completes the story that most other books have never covered - the domestic side of life of a 1930's gangster. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the era.

Top 10 Crime Book of the 21st Century
I must say that in all the recent books about gangsters and their molls from the 1930s, this book is one of the best ever, period!Full of new information on the Dillinger gang and Ma Barker and her brood of killers.Also, many photographs, which have never before been published.If you don't purchase this one, you are missing out on an important part of researching any gangster from this time period, which will include the woman who ran with these bandits. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. 1903-1934    2. Biography    3. Crime And Criminals    4. Criminals    5. Criminology    6. Dillinger, John,    7. Friends and associates    8. General    9. Mistresses    10. Murder - General    11. True Crime    12. True Crime / Espionage    13. U.S. History - Depression And New Deal (1929-1938)    14. United States    15. United States - 20th Century    16. Women outlaws    17. True Crime / General   

Reviews (2)

Great book.......
Terry Gould came to my school and discuss his book and the gave us in insight of the Triads and Kwan Kung. Just as he did when he came to the school, his book gives great information of how the Triads were created and why they chose the God Kwan Kung. Many more intresting facts he provides in his book. It is intresting and difficult to put down.

I was there. Therefore, I know.
While Steven Wong the Triad Gangster rose through the ranks in Vancouver's Gangland, I was a Vancouver cop who had many dealings with him. I probably knew Wong, and of his activities, more so than anyone in the Vancouver Police Department, other than a handfull of other cops who might be inclined to say the same thing. I was a cop who used Wong to my own end, while Wong used me to his. I still don't know who, if anyone, came out on top. Read more

Subjects:  1. 1964-    2. Biography    3. Canada    4. Gangsters    5. Infamous Crimes And Criminals    6. Organized Crime    7. Triads (Gangs)    8. True Crime    9. True Crime / Espionage    10. Wong, Steven,