MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

SANYIKA SHAKUR, AKA MONSTER KODY SCOTT

After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members, twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured into one of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name “Monster” for committing acts of brutal violence that repulsed even his fellow gang members.

When the inevitable jail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete political and personal transformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, black nationalist, member of the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and crusader against the causes of gangsterism. In a work that has been compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair and decay of America’s inner cities and gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the black ghetto experience.

NY. Penguin. 1993. . 389p.

By Hargrave Lee Adam.

From the Cradle to the Grave. “Some years ago I set myself the task of studying crime and prison life in all its phases. Not merely to accept hearsay evidence, but to see and hear with my own eyes and ears all that was significant on the subject that I could. Therefore, whereever anything was to be learned concerning crime I there prosecuted and observed for my inquiries myself what transpired.”

London: T. Werner Laurie, 346p.

By Robert J. Ingersoll.

In addition to these, nations have relied on confiscation and degradation, on maimings, whippings, brandings, and exposures to public ridicule and contempt. Connected with the court of justice was the chamber of torture. The ingenuity of man was exhausted in that would surely the construction the most reach of instruments sensitive nerve. All this was in the interest protection of virtue, and done of civilization — for the states. the well-being of how Curiously enough, the fact is that, no matter severe the punishments were, the crimes increased.

NY. Farrell (1892) 49 pages.

By John Cuthbert Goodwin.

“There is good—much good—in every man, and in every woman. Even in cases where it seems non-existent it is but shyly waiting to be coaxed up to the surface. Some there may be, others there will be, who will see in this volume, as in the daily newspapers, the stage, the kinema, and in parts of the Old Testament itself, a veiled incentive towards wrongdoing. With the sensitive, the apprehensive, and all who, speaking perhaps with authority, and not as the scribes, see a healthy purpose in nothing and a sinister motive in everything, I do not attempt to argue. Crime is a difficult subject to handle in such a manner that its presentation satisfies all, offends none, and withholds secrets which prudence demands should remain secrets, but I have endeavoured to incorporate in my mosaic of deeds and misdeeds nothing that is not already known to the criminal but unknown to the majority of the public. I would, however, assure my readers that they need not expect a tedious pageant of ancient exposures masquerading as palate-tickling novelties.”

London: Hutchinson & Co., 1923. 336p.