By Ice-T , Douglas Century

My life’s been a great story / In the ultimate war / Should I ill or do right? / Make peace or go raw?—Ice-T, “Exodus” He’s a hip-hop icon credited with single-handedly creating gangsta rap in the 1980s. Television viewers know him as Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola on the top-rated TV drama Law & Order: SVU. But where the hype and the headlines end, the real story of Ice-T—the one few of his millions of fans have ever heard—truly begins.Ice is Ice-T in his own words—raw, uncensored, and unafraid to speak his mind. About his orphan upbringing on the gang-infested streets of South Central Los Angeles. About his four-year stint in the U.S. Army’s famed “Tropic Lightning” outfit. About his successful career as a hustler and thief, the car crash that nearly killed him, and the fateful decision to turn away from a life of crime and forge his own path to international entertainment stardom.Ice by Ice-T is both a tell-it-like-it-is tale of redemption and a star-studded tour of the pop culture firmament. The acclaimed rapper and actor shares never-before-told stories about friends like Tupac, Dick Wolf, Chris Rock, and an antler-clad Flavor Flav, among others. Readers will ride along as Ice-T’s incendiary rock band Body Count narrowly escapes from a riotous mob of angry concertgoers in Milan, and listen in as the music legend battles the self-appointed censors over his controversial “Cop Killer” single. Most of all, Ice is the place where one of the game’s most opinionated players breaks down his own secret plan for living, offering up candid observations on marriage and monogamy, the current state of hip-hop, and his latest passion: doing one-on-one gang interventions and mentoring at-risk youths around the country. With insights into the cutthroat world of the street—and the cutthroat world of Hollywood—Ice is the inspirational story of a true American original.

New York: One World Books, 2011. 283p.

By Fred Gardaphe

The gangster, in the hands of the Italian American artist, becomes a telling figure in the tale of American race, gender, and ethnicity - a figure that reflects the autobiography of an immigrant group just as it reflects the fantasy of a native population. From Wiseguys to Wise Men studies the figure of the gangster and explores its social function in the construction and projection of masculinity in the United States. By looking at the cultural icon of the gangster through the lens of gender, this book presents new insights into material that has been part of American culture for close to 100 years.

London; New York: Routledge, 2006. 266p.

By Anton Makarenko.

As one of the founders of Soviet pedagogy, Anton Makarenko elaborated the theory and methodology of upbringing in self-governing child collectives and introduced the concept of productive labor into the educational system. Encouraged by Gorky, Makarenko wrote The Pedagogical Poem (in the West The Road to Life) based on the true stories of his pupils from the orphanage for street children, which he started in 1925.

Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint. (1933) 441 pages.

By S. Giora Shoham.

This continuation of Shoham's unique psychoanalytic personality theory of deviance applies its principles and insights to understanding social deviance in a deeper cultural and religious sense. Mining the works of Rank, Ferenzi, Stack Sullivan and many other great personality theorists of the twentieth century, Shoham effortlessly blends them into a deep understanding of existentialist thought to explain the social deviance in others and in ourselves. Shoham's obvious adoration of the Judeo-Christian ethic, linking it directly to internal family relationships and the external cultural and physical world both reassures and threatens.This is a monumental work, as challenging as it is informative and will remain a classic for the ages.

NY. Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2012.

By Arnold Arluke.

Understanding Animal Cruelty and Ourselves. Psychiatrists define cruelty to animals as a psychological problem or personality disorder. Legally, animal cruelty is described by a list of behaviors. In Just a Dog, Arnold Arluke argues that our current constructs of animal cruelty are decontextualized—imposed without regard to the experience of the groups committing the act. Yet those who engage in animal cruelty have their own understandings of their actions and of themselves as actors. In this fascinating book, Arluke probes those understandings and reveals the surprising complexities of our relationships with animals. Just a Dog draws from interviews with more than 250 people, including humane agents who enforce cruelty laws, college students who tell stories of childhood abuse of animals, hoarders who chronically neglect the welfare of many animals, shelter workers who cope with the ethics of euthanizing animals, and public relations experts who use incidents of animal cruelty for fundraising purposes.

Philadelphia: Temple university Press, 2006. 232p.