Customer Reviews

Gangs: Stories of Life and Death from the Streets (Adrenaline Classics)

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I had originally written a review before but amazon did not post it up. Probaly becuase i wrote a bad review, like i will do here again. I'll be more brief. This book is kinda like a coming attractions "previews". The author took about 10-20 pages of other authors works about gangs and put it into his own book. For example, the book "Monster" written by Sanyika Shakur, the author took about 15 pages of Sanyika's book and put it in his book. Did not change anything around, just took everything verbatim from "Monster" and put it in his. The only contribution the author made to it was a footnote saying what the following was about.

This author does this throughout the whole book. Each chapter consists of about 20-25 pages of other peoples work thrown into this book, w/ a footnote at the beginning of the chapter. The footnotes are the author's only original contribution to this book.

As for what you learn about gangs, like i said, this book is kinda a smorgasboard. If you want to get a book that has stories in it from about 15 other books in here that just give you bits and pieces, then by all means buy the book. But personally, you'd be better off buying the individual books instead of buying this one. It will give you more info anyways.

This author of this book is basically a plagiarist, and put together this book to make money off of other peoples works.. It is not informative about gangs at all. Take it from a person who is majoring in Criminal Justice, and is very well read in this subject and has seen just about every documentary out there and movie on gangs. Do not buy this book.

I didn't like all of the stories in the book. Some were just hard to read (ie. A Clockwork Orange) or hard to keep interest.

Way more than just the LA Crip/Blood stereotype. That's in there, sure, but Sean Donahue has also chosen really readable selections on soccer hooligans, neo-nazis and the skinheads who are NOT nazis, NY gangs of the 1800's, common street tough gangs, organized drug dealers, kidnap rings in El Salvador, Vietnamese gangs and two fascinating "anti-gang" pieces on a DA who turned to the dark side trying to bust up a gang, and a gang being decimated by drug addiction. It's fast-paced, exciting, and you'll find yourself staying up late to read "just one more" story. My only off-note: regrettably there is none of Hunter Thompson Hell's Angels work; I'd have swapped that for the Clockwork Orange excerpt. But you'll really enjoy what IS in there and probably learn something. About half the selections are full pieces, not excerpts, but the stuff pulled from bigger works is well chosen and you don't feel left hanging. It's just over 300 pages.

Sent this to a institution but it was rejected and disposed of for it's content.