David R. Farber

A interesting, yet somewhat uninspiring, book on the phenomenon of crack cocaine. Lays out the history of crack in America. Describes how crack decimated the inner-cities, and destroyed the family structures of people living there.
Where I did feel the book got interesting was in the descriptions of distribution of crack by different gangs. All the pertinent gangs are covered. The Gangster Disciples, Black P-Stone Nation/El Rukns, the Latin Kings, Bloods and Crips. Their leaders, Jeff Fort, Rick Ross, Rayful Edwards.
Having served for over 20 years as a Federal Bureau of Prisons employee, it was like a trip down memory lane for me. I witnessed the incarceration of so many young black men, sentenced to horrific terms for dealing only tiny amounts of crack. I thought then, and still do, that the mandatory sentences were a real tragedy.
The book would probably serve well as a guidebook to beginning correctional officers, law students, and college-age political science majors.… (más)

This book has some problems:
1. Thinly footnoted
2. No bibliography
3. Somewhat simplistic
4. Failure to connect the hostage crisis of 1979 with later acts of terrorism.

On the plus side:
1. It is highly readable
2. It details the post WWII involvement of the US in Iran

Jimmy Carter comes off as a tragic figure, a victim of a perfect storm of events that conspired to ruin his presidency from the beginning. Most notably these were: the fallout from Watergate, Vietnam, and the Church committee. Also, Carter shares some blame for being too much of an outsider.

I would recommend this book.… (más)

304 pages. Highlighting and/or writing present throughout book. Does NOT interfere with reading. Synopsis Entertaining and scrupulously researched, Chicago '68 reconstructs the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago an epochal moment in American cultural and political history. By drawing on a wide range of sources, Farber tells and retells the story of the protests in three different voices, from the perspectives of the major protagonists the Yippies, the National Mobilization to End the War, and Mayor Richard J. Daley and his police. He brilliantly recreates all the excitement and drama, the violently charged action and language of this period of crisis, giving life to the whole set of cultural experiences we call "the sixties." "Chicago '68 was a watershed summer. Chicago '68 is a watershed book. Farber succeeds in presenting a sensitive, fairminded composite portrait that is at once a model of fine narrative history and an example of how one can walk the intellectual tightrope between 'reporting one's findings' and offering judgements about them."Peter I. Rose, Contemporary Sociology.… (más)