This book has become, since its original publication in l962, a model of powerful and incisive writing in the field of sociology. Dr. Yablonsky avoids the jargon which so often distorts the professional report, chooses wherever possible to use the actual language of gang boys, translating their feelings and motives through his own direct experience in working with these youths. His approach neither justifies nor overstates, but attempts to understand the gang in the complex of its origins and its experience, concludes with certain recommendations which have an application to many of the problems currently being faced in Los Angeles. An important and immensely useful work.