Ocean State Libraries

Two kids with the same name were born blocks apart in the same decaying city within a few years of each other. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, army officer, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.

After their parents divorce in the 1970's, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed, or killing someone else, or to beatings-for-pay as a boxer. Nearby, his father,...

In the cold winter light of the Mississippi Delta, three lonely people stumble under the weight of a shared tragedy. Lawrence is paralyzed with grief after the suicide of his twin brother. Twelve-year-old James drifts into the perilous orbit of local teenagers while his single mother, Marlee, is too exhausted from her menial job to interpret the clues. Sudden violence forces mother and son to flee their home and they alight on Lawrence's property....

"At nineteen Trethewey's world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma. Here she explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. Moving through her mother's history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a 'child of miscegenation' in Mississippi,...

"The numbers are staggering: Over the past twenty years in Chicago, 14,033 people have been killed and another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire. What does that do to the spirit of individuals and communities? Drawing on his decades of experience, Alex Kotlowitz set out to chronicle one summer in the city, writing of those who have emerged from the violence and whose stories reveal the capacity--and the breaking point--of the human heart and soul....

School is out for the summer and twelve-year-old Shaun is about to find a dangerous new group of friends. Having lost his father in the Fakland War, life has been lonely in this grim coastal town in northern England. But when Shaun meets the local skinheads, their companionship, and even their violence, appeal to Shaun's hurt and rage. Combo is an older volatile skinhead whom Shaun finds to be like a big brother and under his leadership, the gang...

"Drawing the connection between professional wrestling and the construction of contemporary masculinity, they [Sut Jhally and Jackson Katz] show how so-called 'entertainment' is related to homophobia, sexual assault and relationship violence..."--Container.

Ceremonial Violence analyzes the Columbine high school shooting and four other cases and explains for the first time why teenagers commit school rampage shootings. In additon to these cases, Fast provides a detailed, clear narrative of the Columbine shootings. With his grasp of the elements of abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, sociology, and neurology that contribute to the homicidal mindset, Fast offers us a means of understanding and...

From this eBook is a sharp and compassionate investigation of the root causes of the epidemic of drug abuse, violence, and despair among "mainstream" American teenagers In the past few years, it has become painfully clear that all is not well with the children of middle-class America. Beyond the shootings at Columbine, hardly a day goes by without stories of drug use, binge drinking, fatal accidents, and senseless suicides among middle-class adolescents....