The Circle

by James Samuel Coleman

BOOK CIRCLE is a fast-moving, action-packed story about a real, notorious gang of teenagers. They cared little about who they stomped, what vandalism they did, or whose car they swiped in their attempts to get back at the "codger" and "bags" of the community.The inside details of the many jobs they pulled, how the kids behave toward each other, and what they really think of adults is plainly revealed.Although the story is about teenagers and written for teenagers it is a gutsy book and not for the squeamish or chicken-hearted. The story will "turn off" most adults but it is MUST reading for those parents who refuse to understand their teenagers as a lesson in what can happen if their kids finally "tune them out".AUTHOR A. Coleman is a retired college physics professor. However, he has spent a good deal of time as an unpaid street worker helping troubled youths, especially those who organized into street gangs. The CIRCLE is a fictionalised story of one of these gangs. Coleman is also a well-established author of science books for the layman.

120 pages, Paperback

First published July 21, 2000

About the author

James Samuel Coleman was an American sociologist, theorist, and empirical researcher, based chiefly at the University of Chicago. He was elected president of the American Sociological Association. He studied the sociology of education and public policy, and was one of the earliest users of the term "social capital." His Foundations of Social Theory influenced sociological theory. His "The Adolescent Society" (1961) and "Coleman Report" (Equality of Educational Opportunity, 1966) were two of the most cited books in educational sociology. The landmark Coleman Report helped transform educational theory, reshape national education policies, and it influenced public and scholarly opinion regarding the role of schooling in determining equality and productivity in the United States.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much required reading when it's about the older kids in your neighborhood. A real page turner when you wonder which names in the book you might know. It was rumored that the author was going to write a second book about the new and up coming inheritors of the old Circle Gang, but that didn't pan when two years later after self publishing his book he became suspect in the murder of one of the boy's whose older brothers were the subject of the book. If you were ever looking for the sequel, some guy named E.J. Fleming writes it in his 2018 book "Death of an Altar Boy". The investigation remained unsolved until 2018 and as it turned out it wasn't James. It was the priest.

Another perhaps better look at the entire subject might be a blog that is still current to this day. Called "Hell's Acre" it got it start in 2008 as it encouraged people to reminisce in their child hood growing up in Sixteen Acres and surrounding areas, in secret hopes of solving that cold case in particular and later it branched out to other cold cases from the area as well.

Anyway, if you weren't part of the background of the story, your likely not to find that much of interest in the book, but it's an okay read and as the other review said, has no redeeming features.

[Sean Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written as a first-hand account by a member of a gang of small-town juvenile hoodlums, there's not a plot really, just tale after tale of theft and destruction. There's not enough plight against the boys to garner much empathy other than that most adults are stupid, some are abusive, and there's nothing to do so let's be bad. Told in the language of a teenage delinquent, it's readable, but (spoiler) don't expect any life-changing epiphanies to make the boys have a change of heart. Maybe later in their lives, but not by the end of the book.