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Cop in the Hood


Winner of the 2008 PROSE Award for Best Book in Sociology

Buy Cop in the Hood from Amazon.com

Never mind "The Wire." Here is the real thing. --The Wall Street Journal

Cop in the Hood is an explosive insider’s story of what it is really like to be a police officer on the front lines of the war on drugs. Harvard-trained sociologist Peter Moskos became a cop in Baltimore’s roughest neighborhood, the location for the HBO drama The Wire. He provides an unforgettable window into a world outsiders never see. Those who read it will never view the badge the same way.

September 23, 2008

Willie Bosket

I recently finished reading Fox Butterfield's excellent All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence.

Amazingly researched (Butterfield is a Class-A journalist), this 1996 book follows a culture of violence and its transference over time from white slave owners in the historically f**ked-up county of Edgefield, South Carolina to Willie Bosket and the contemporary ghettos of today. It's not a feel-good story. But it's a great read.

Willie Bosket
was a very bad boy.

The New York Times has a story on him today. He's been in solitary confinement for two decades.

6 comments:

DJK said...

Why pay to keep trash like this alive? He killed people for fun. Why not just put a bullet in his head and be done with him?



Why should the people of this country have to be defenseless against trash like this?

PCM said...

We're not defenseless. That's why he's locked away. Willie Bosket is not a good man. But the book is interesting is that it shows how it's not a surprise he turned out this way.

Anonymous said...

Willie Bosket is a man who was neglected by his mother and raised to beieve that he would never be anything more than a prisonner. Willie was put into the system for the first time at the age of 9. He could never escape the clutches of his social reality. "All Gods Children" was an eye awakening book for myself. I suggest all should read it before making presumptions on Willie Bosket.

Anonymous said...

Yea, I mean one almost has no choice but to grow up as Willie did when nothing good is in his future. If you feel worthless as a child, and feel like you won't amount to anything as an adult, who knows how one will turn out? Also, some of his behaviors could be hereditary, and you have absolutely no control over that!

Anonymous said...

i hate when people talk about willie i mean the man was only human,and coming from where i came i feel the same way he did,like being broke, depressed,not having nothing.i feel his pain.just read his book.you'll see

PCM said...

But do you kill strangers on the subway?