Gangsters: Fifty Years of Madness, Drugs, and Death on the Streets of America
From Booklist , March 1, 1997
Those who work with gangsters are apt to be absorbed by Yablonsky's account of his career in this field. Part memoir, part sociology,
his story hooks readers from the start with anecdotes of his own teenage encounters with gangs in Newark; and tame those days seem
compared with the contemporary urban gang and its hallmark of coldhearted hyperviolence. Yablonsky has investigated gangs from the
West Side Story era through the present and supplies many quotations from gangsters that illustrate the reasons boys join as
"Wannabees," earn some "rep" through murder, and, if they survive into their late 20s, become "OGs" (original gangsters). This survey of
sociopathology is not unremittingly grim, however. Yablonsky describes strategies for tamping down gang violence and socializing
gangsters, such as attaching an intermediary to a gang, acting out a "psychodrama" that encourages young men to express their rage
nonlethally, and creating "therapeutic communities" as an alternative to prison. A few success stories that Yablonsky recounts encourage
hope and perhaps new entrants to the criminology profession. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright 1997, American Library Association. All rights reserved
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