Our Guys
"Riveting. . . .In a way that makes for compulsive reading, Lefkowitz has exposed the substrata of evil in a seemingly idyllic town. Most troubling of all, you come away with the realization that what happened in Glen Ridge could happen anywhere."--Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action"Lefkowitz's extraordinary chronicle...is an important book, one that should be read by parents and educator's alike...It's possible to believe that there is not a whole new batch of "our guys" graduating from high school this year all across America...We want to think that crimes like the Glen Ridge rape are a consequence of a brutalizing environment and occur only in the impoverished inner cities...But as Lefkowitz writes: "These Glen Ridge kids, they were pure gold, every mother's dream, every father's pride...in their perfection they belonged to all of us." And if a community like that, without knowing or intending it, is raising its boys to be abusive in their dealings with girls and women...then what's going on in the rest of America? Is there some dark unforeseen underside to the American Dream that leads decent, privileged boys to behave like a pack of jackals? Lefkowitz...argues persuasively that there is...for if we are raising our male children to be feral, which is to say, if they are becoming incapable of empathy for others, especially their female counterparts, then what will their children be like?"--New York Times Book Review, front page