Of interest to criminal-justice reformers, community workers, and policymakers.
Inspirational story of a criminal whose self-reform has brought peace both to him and his city.
This is the tale of William Juneboy Outlaw III, who long ago began a life of crime on the streets of New Haven, Connecticut—located, Barber (Writer-in-Residence/Wesleyan Univ.) notes, “in the wealthiest state in the country” but whose declining population is marked by plenty of poverty and ethnic division. Had he been born under different circumstances, notes one of the state’s crime analysts, Outlaw might have been the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. “As it was,” that observer continues, “he took mediocre talent and created a first-class gang that ran half of the city of New Haven. What he accomplished was the equivalent of the Afghan warlords putting together scrubs and taking on the U.S. Army.” He was also something of a Robin Hood figure in the poorer sections of town, buying needed supplies and groceries for neighbors and even shoveling sidewalks in winter. Still, Outlaw lived up to his name, controlling the trade in drugs, weapons, and stolen goods. The police caught up with him after he murdered a member of a rival gang, and he was sentenced to an 85-year prison term. He might have turned into a behind-bars crime lord, pulling that long stretch in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, “where Whitey Bulger, Al Capone, and John Gotti had served time.” After a rocky start, though, Outlaw turned himself around and earned early release. Since returning to New Haven, as Barber closely documents, Outlaw has become a mentor to young people who might otherwise be on the path to prison. He tells one parolee group, in blunt language, that his goal is “to reduce recidivism and keep you guys out of the fucking penitentiary.” It seems to have worked: Violent crime has fallen by 70 percent, much of which local authorities attribute to Outlaw’s interventions among at-risk people.
Of interest to criminal-justice reformers, community workers, and policymakers.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-269284-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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