{"title":"Eric C Schneider","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"vampires-dragons-and-egyptian-kings-book-eric-c-schneider-9780691074542","title":"Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings","description":"They called themselves \"Vampires,\" \"Dragons,\" and \"Egyptian Kings.\" They were divided by race, ethnicity, and neighborhood boundaries, but united by common styles, slang, and codes of honor. They fought--and sometimes killed--to protect and expand their territories. In postwar New York, youth gangs were a colorful and controversial part of the urban landscape, made famous by West Side Story and infamous by the media. This is the first historical study to explore fully the culture of these gangs. Eric Schneider takes us into a world of switchblades and slums, zoot suits and bebop music to explain why youth gangs emerged, how they evolved, and why young men found membership and the violence it involved so attractive. Schneider begins by describing how postwar urban renewal, slum clearances, and ethnic migration pitted African-American, Puerto Rican, and Euro-American youths against each other in battles to dominate changing neighborhoods. But he argues that young men ultimately joined gangs less because of ethnicity than because membership and gang violence offered rare opportunities for adolescents alienated from school, work, or the family to win prestige, power, adulation from girls, and a masculine identity. In the course of the book, Schneider paints a rich and detailed portrait of everyday life in gangs, drawing on personal interviews with former members to re-create for us their language, music, clothing, and social mores. We learn what it meant to be a \"down bopper\" or a \"jive stud,\" to \"fish\" with a beautiful \"deb\" to the sounds of the Jesters, and to wear gang sweaters, wildly colored zoot suits, or the \"Ivy League look.\" He outlines the unwritten rules of gang behavior, the paths members followed to adulthood, and the effects of gang intervention programs, while also providing detailed analyses of such notorious gang-related crimes as the murders committed by the \"Capeman,\" Salvador Agron. Schneider focuses on the years from 1940 to 1975, but takes us up to the present in his conclusion, showing how youth gangs are no longer social organizations but economic units tied to the underground economy. Written with a profound understanding of adolescent culture and the street life of New York, this is a powerful work of history and a compelling story for a general audience.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49851839840529,"sku":"GOR009279562","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51728023683345,"sku":"CIN0691074542VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53376916029713,"sku":"NIN9780691074542","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691074542.jpg?v=1751295173"},{"product_id":"ecology-of-homicide-book-eric-c-schneider-9780812252484","title":"The Ecology of Homicide","description":"Like so many big cities in the United States, Philadelphia has suffered from a strikingly high murder rate over the past fifty years. Such tragic loss of life, as Eric C. Schneider demonstrates, does not occur randomly throughout the city; rather, murders have been racialized and spatialized, concentrated in the low-income African American populations living within particular neighborhoods. In The Ecology of Homicide, Schneider tracks the history of murder in Philadelphia during a critical period from World War II until the early 1980s, focusing on the years leading up to and immediately following the 1966 Miranda Supreme Court decision and the shift to easier gun access and the resulting spike in violence that followed.  Examining the transcripts of nearly two hundred murder trials, The Ecology of Homicide presents the voices of victims and perpetrators of crime, as well as the enforcers of the law—using, to an unprecedented degree, the words of the people who were actually involved. In Schneider's hands, their perspectives produce an intimate record of what was happening on the streets of Philadelphia in the decades from 1940 until 1980, describing how race factored into everyday life, how corrosive crime was to the larger community, how the law intersected with every action of everyone involved, and, most critically, how individuals saw themselves and others. Schneider traces the ways in which low-income African American neighborhoods became ever more dangerous for those who lived there as the combined effects of concentrated poverty, economic disinvestment, and misguided policy accumulated to sustain and deepen what he calls an \"ecology of violence,\" bound in place over time.  Covering topics including gender, urban redevelopment, community involvement, children, and gangs, as well as the impact of violence perpetrated by and against police, The Ecology of Homicide is a powerful link between urban history and the contemporary city.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362337231121,"sku":"CIN0812252489G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362339688721,"sku":"CIN0812252489VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740255809809,"sku":"NIN9780812252484","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812252489.jpg?v=1752317720"},{"product_id":"vampires-dragons-and-egyptian-kings-book-eric-c-schneider-9780691001418","title":"Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings","description":"They called themselves \"Vampires\", \"Dragons\", and \"Egyptian Kings\". They were divided by race, ethnicity and neighbourhood boundaries, but united by common styles, slang and codes of honour. They fought - and sometimes killed - to protect and expand their territories. In postwar New York, youth gangs were a colourful and controversial part of the urban landscape, made famous by \"West Side Story\" and infamous by the media. This is a historical study which explores the culture of these gangs. Author Eric Schneider takes us into a world of switchblades and slums, zoot suits and bebop music to explain why youth gangs emerged, how they evolved, and why young men found membership and the violence it involved, so attractive. Schneider focuses on the years from 1940 to 1975, but takes us up to the present in his conclusion, showing how youth gangs are no longer social organizations but economic units tied to the underground economy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50762625483025,"sku":"CIN0691001413G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51323387248913,"sku":"CIN0691001413VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0691001413.jpg?v=1751168133"},{"product_id":"in-the-web-of-class-book-eric-c-schneider-9780814779811","title":"In the Web of Class","description":"\"An analytic overview of the history of social welfare and juvenile justice in Boston..[Schneider] traces cogently the origins, development, and ultimate failure of Protestant and Catholic reformers' efforts to ameliorate working-class poverty and juvenile delinquency.\"  —Choice\"Anyone who wants to understand why America's approach to juvenile justice doesn't work should read In the Web of Class.\"  —Michael B. Katz,University of Pennsylvania","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51181321322769,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51181323550993,"sku":"NIN9780814779811","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52334756266257,"sku":"NLS9780814779811","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0814779816.jpg?v=1763220462"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-eric-c-schneider.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}