Lost Boys: Why our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them [Hardcover]

James Garbarino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 1999

It seems children are more violent and angry than ever before. Does our society make it difficult for them to stay out of trouble? Are neglectful, abusive, absent parents to blame? Does easy access to guns actually drive boys to violence? Faced with school-based shootings in communities as diverse as rural Jonesboro, Arkansas, and suburban Springfield, Oregon, people are waking up to the truth -- the current explosion of gratuitous homicidal violence is neither an anomaly nor about other people's children. It is nothing less than a wave of epidemic violence among our youth.

In this groundbreaking book, Dr. James Garbarino presents stunning new insights into the growing number of boys who kill. Drawing on twenty-five years of work with children and families, he shows that no matter where we live or how good we are as parents, chances are our children are going to school with troubled boys capable of getting guns and pulling the triggers.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Striking a sober but ultimately hopeful note, psychologist and Cornell University professor Garbarino (Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment) lends his voice to the growing chorus of concern about the difficulties boys face in their journey to manhood. We live in dangerous times, he asserts, citing the ready availability of guns (nearly half of all American households contain one) and the escalating rate of youth homicide (which increased 168% in the past decade alone). Noting that the highly publicized killings by children of the 19971998 school year have served as a kind of wake-up call, Garbarino devotes the first part of his book to examining the roots of violence among boys. He traces it to class and race issues, as well as risk factors such as child neglect, parental abandonment, physical and emotional abuse, spiritual emptiness and a culture that legitimizes violence in movies, television and video games. In the second half, he outlines how involved adults might prevent the downward spiral by identifying and treating patterns of aggression early in a boys life, and how providing the proper spiritual, psychological and social anchors can keep a troubled boy from drifting into violence. Garbarino effectively illustrates his points with stories of his own work with violent boys. Solidly researched and written, this book is of equal value to parents, educators, family therapists and other professionals. It could easily serve as a blueprint for preventing more tragedies like the ones in Jonesboro, Ark., and Springfield, Ore. 20-city TV and radio satellite tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The school murder sprees of 1997-98 provide a backdrop for this inquiry into an "epidemic" of youthful male violence that has been worsening over the past 25 years. The bulk of the book is devoted to an analysis of the roots and meaning of lethal violence as revealed through interviews with perpetrators. Garbarino (human development, Cornell Univ.; Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment, Jossey-Bass, 1995) discusses these narratives in the context of statistical and psychological/ psychiatric research. Causative factors like abuse, gangs and codes of honor, substance abuse, neurological deficits, and school problems are considered from a social ecology perspective grounded in the work of Garbarino's mentor, Urie Bronfenbrenner. The book concludes with a catalog of strategies to combat boyhood violence. Solutions call for spiritual literacy as well as government action and research-based programs. Readable yet well documented and brimming with ideas, this book is recommended for larger public libraries and public policy collections.AAntoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; Anchor Books ed edition (May 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684859084
• ISBN-13: 978-0684859088
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #890,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very unusual, compassionate book, September 21, 1999

By 

Mary Ellen Johnson [e-mail] (Woodland Park, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Boys: Why our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them (Hardcover)

I've read a lot of books about lost boys, but I've seldom been as impressed as I was by this one. Unlike other experts, this author never gives up on a boy--even if he's sitting on death row, as 300 American juveniles are. The author speaks of the divine spark in each of us--even murderers. He also addresses the root causes of violence and how to save our children. Prevention is the answer, of course,along with compassion and believing in the inherent goodness of all human beings. In a society that equates punishment with justice and believes in retribution rather than resurrection, LOST BOYS offers spiritual and practical hope for all.

45 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Some information unconscionably misrepresented, September 5, 2006

By 

N.N. (Albuquerque, NM, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them (Paperback)

I worked as a documentary producer for some time in the 90's and came to have some first-hand knowledge of one of the cases James Garbarino discusses in this book, that of Shareef Cousin, a New Orleans teen who was once the youngest person ever to be on death row in the US.


Garbarino presents Cousin as a prime example of how a child can fall into a life of violence and murder for lack of a father figure. Problem: Shareef Cousin was not violent and did not murder anyone. His case is one of the most famous US cases of a totally innocent person, in this case a child, landing up on death row. Cousin was actually on several home videotapes taken at the time of the crime playing in a basketball game at a distant community center. Authorities were well aware of this evidence at the time of his trial but suppressed the information, and, in the meantime, coerced Cousin into confessing to a robbery he also couldn't have committed in order to keep him in prison after he was taken off death row. (He's out now, all charges dropped and convictions overturned, and he's a fine, upstanding citizen.). His story is not one of a fatherless boy falling into a life of crime, but of racism and corruption in the New Orleans DA'S office.


If you use the Amazon search feature to view Garbarino's references to Cousin's case in this book, you'll see he gives the impression he interviewed Cousin at length to get all sorts of insight into how his childhood circumstances made him a murderer. He even intimates that Shareef more or less admitted guilt. This is sheer rubbish. From day one, Cousin, his wonderfully supportive family, and numerous witnesses proclaimed his innocence to anyone and everyone who would listen. And by the time this book was published, his murder conviction was being overturned and he was well on his way to being cleared of the sham robbery charges. I find it hard to believe Garbarino was unaware of Shareef's innocence when he wrote this section of the book. But he needed Cousin to be guilty, being the picture-perfect fatherless black kid and all, in order to support his shallow, pop-psychological theories on boys and violence, so he completely misrepresented this child and his situation.


Such a lack of respect for people and for the truth makes all the other anecdotes and "data" in this book highly suspect. What a shame because this is such an important topic that really needs to be addressed by an author of intellectual and personal integrity. -- If Garbarino is their only advocate, the Lost Boys will most likely remain lost.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Concise analysis of the causes of adolescent violence., May 31, 1999

By 

David W. Aiken, MSW ([e-mail]) (Newark, Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Boys: Why our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them (Hardcover)

This book provides in its few, short pages, a complete and concise, yet very readable, analysis of the causes of youthful violence and tells what can be done - indeed, what must be done, from earliest childhood on - to prevent it. This book should be required reading by all teachers, court and law enforcement officers, physicians, social workers - by everyone who works with children and adolescents of any age, in any capacity, as well as by all those who make policy and pass legislation at any level of federal, state or local government.