Author: T. Jefferson Parker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780451226112
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 454
Book Description
Investigating the latest crime scene of a celebrity thief who has been staging lucrative heists and donating the spoils to charity, rookie deputy Charlie Hood is forced to make an ethics-testing decision when the thief is targeted by a professional killer. Reprint.
L.A. Outlaws
Author: T. Jefferson Parker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780451226112
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 454
Book Description
Investigating the latest crime scene of a celebrity thief who has been staging lucrative heists and donating the spoils to charity, rookie deputy Charlie Hood is forced to make an ethics-testing decision when the thief is targeted by a professional killer. Reprint.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780451226112
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 454
Book Description
Investigating the latest crime scene of a celebrity thief who has been staging lucrative heists and donating the spoils to charity, rookie deputy Charlie Hood is forced to make an ethics-testing decision when the thief is targeted by a professional killer. Reprint.
Gay L.A.
Author: Lillian Faderman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520260619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
Charts LA's gay history, from the first missionary encounters with Native American cross-gendered 'two spirits' to cross-dressing frontier women in search of their fortunes, and from the 1960s gay liberation movement to the creation of gay marketing in the 1990s.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520260619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
Charts LA's gay history, from the first missionary encounters with Native American cross-gendered 'two spirits' to cross-dressing frontier women in search of their fortunes, and from the 1960s gay liberation movement to the creation of gay marketing in the 1990s.
Legendary Louisiana Outlaws
Author: Keagan LeJeune
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807162582
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807162582
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.
Hood
Author: Emma Donoghue
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062316818
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, Hood is a tale of grief and lust, frustration and hilarity, death and family. “Hood is thoroughly contemporary in how richly it depicts a beloved's death to review a couple's bumpy love history...This book's real pleasures lie in its intimate insights, its accurate characters and its sharp, rich observations... the greatest achievement of Hood is how it captures the domesticity of erotic passion” – Boston Globe Penelope O’Grady and Cara Wall are risking disaster when, like teenagers in any intolerant time and place—here, a Dublin convent school in the late 1970s—they fall in love. Yet Cara, the free spirit, and Pen, the stoic, craft a bond so strong it seems as though nothing could sever it: not the bickering, not the secrets, not even Cara’s infidelities. But thirteen years on, a car crash kills Cara and rips the lid off Pen’s world. Pen is still in the closet, teaching at her old school, living under the roof of Cara’s gentle father, who thinks of her as his daughter’s friend. How can she survive widowhood without even daring to claim the word? Over the course of one surreal week of bereavement, she is battered by memories that range from the humiliating, to the exalted, to the erotic, to the funny. It will take Pen all her intelligence and wit to sort through her tumultuous past with Cara, and all the nerve she can muster to start remaking her life. Donoghue’s Hood is a masterfully crafted narrative of relationships and a daring, deft exploration of the love’s imperfection—and how it can nonetheless dominate our lives as we grow and change.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062316818
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, Hood is a tale of grief and lust, frustration and hilarity, death and family. “Hood is thoroughly contemporary in how richly it depicts a beloved's death to review a couple's bumpy love history...This book's real pleasures lie in its intimate insights, its accurate characters and its sharp, rich observations... the greatest achievement of Hood is how it captures the domesticity of erotic passion” – Boston Globe Penelope O’Grady and Cara Wall are risking disaster when, like teenagers in any intolerant time and place—here, a Dublin convent school in the late 1970s—they fall in love. Yet Cara, the free spirit, and Pen, the stoic, craft a bond so strong it seems as though nothing could sever it: not the bickering, not the secrets, not even Cara’s infidelities. But thirteen years on, a car crash kills Cara and rips the lid off Pen’s world. Pen is still in the closet, teaching at her old school, living under the roof of Cara’s gentle father, who thinks of her as his daughter’s friend. How can she survive widowhood without even daring to claim the word? Over the course of one surreal week of bereavement, she is battered by memories that range from the humiliating, to the exalted, to the erotic, to the funny. It will take Pen all her intelligence and wit to sort through her tumultuous past with Cara, and all the nerve she can muster to start remaking her life. Donoghue’s Hood is a masterfully crafted narrative of relationships and a daring, deft exploration of the love’s imperfection—and how it can nonetheless dominate our lives as we grow and change.
Outlaws
Author: Javier Cercas
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408844214
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
_______________ 'His novels probe the sore spots and raw wounds of contemporary Spain, their cunning and complexity leavened by a light touch and an easy, graceful style' - Boyd Tonkin, Independent on Sunday 'The beauty of this intelligently probing novel is that one is left wondering if we ever truly know anything about anybody – that anybody including ourselves' - Scotsman 'Compelling ... the real strengths of the book are in Cercas's unadorned prose, once again deftly translated by Anne McLean, and in his ear for the rhythms of everyday speech' - Guardian _______________ Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016, this novel from the author of Soldiers of Salamis and The Anatomy of a Moment tells the story of three teenage outsiders in post-Franco Spain In the late 1970s, as Spain was adrift between the death of Franco and the rebirth of democracy, people were moving from the poor south to the cities of the north in search of a better life. But the work, when there was any, was poorly paid and the housing squalid. Out of this world of limited opportunities a generation of delinquents arose whose prospects were stifled and whose rebellion would be brief and violent... One summer's day in Gerona a bespectacled, sixteen-year-old Ignacio Cañas, known to his few friends as Gafitas, is working in an amusement arcade, when a charismatic teenager walks in with the most beautiful girl Cañas has ever seen. Zarco and Tere take over his pinball machine and his life. Thirty years on and now a successful criminal defence lawyer, Cañas has tried to put that long, hot summer of drugs, yearning and delinquency behind him. But when Tere appears in his office and asks him to represent El Zarco, who has been in prison all this time, what else can Gafitas do but accept? A powerful novel of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, of true integrity and the prison celebrity can become, Outlaws confirms Javier Cercas as one of the most thrilling novelists writing anywhere in the world today. _______________ 'Cercas adroitly balances the earlier criminal thrills with the later moral and emotional complexities' - New Statesman 'A moving meditation on youth, love, betrayal and the media, as well as an uncompromising political novel. Cercas has yet again expanded our idea of what fiction can do' - Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Secret History of Costaguana
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408844214
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 390
Book Description
_______________ 'His novels probe the sore spots and raw wounds of contemporary Spain, their cunning and complexity leavened by a light touch and an easy, graceful style' - Boyd Tonkin, Independent on Sunday 'The beauty of this intelligently probing novel is that one is left wondering if we ever truly know anything about anybody – that anybody including ourselves' - Scotsman 'Compelling ... the real strengths of the book are in Cercas's unadorned prose, once again deftly translated by Anne McLean, and in his ear for the rhythms of everyday speech' - Guardian _______________ Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016, this novel from the author of Soldiers of Salamis and The Anatomy of a Moment tells the story of three teenage outsiders in post-Franco Spain In the late 1970s, as Spain was adrift between the death of Franco and the rebirth of democracy, people were moving from the poor south to the cities of the north in search of a better life. But the work, when there was any, was poorly paid and the housing squalid. Out of this world of limited opportunities a generation of delinquents arose whose prospects were stifled and whose rebellion would be brief and violent... One summer's day in Gerona a bespectacled, sixteen-year-old Ignacio Cañas, known to his few friends as Gafitas, is working in an amusement arcade, when a charismatic teenager walks in with the most beautiful girl Cañas has ever seen. Zarco and Tere take over his pinball machine and his life. Thirty years on and now a successful criminal defence lawyer, Cañas has tried to put that long, hot summer of drugs, yearning and delinquency behind him. But when Tere appears in his office and asks him to represent El Zarco, who has been in prison all this time, what else can Gafitas do but accept? A powerful novel of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, of true integrity and the prison celebrity can become, Outlaws confirms Javier Cercas as one of the most thrilling novelists writing anywhere in the world today. _______________ 'Cercas adroitly balances the earlier criminal thrills with the later moral and emotional complexities' - New Statesman 'A moving meditation on youth, love, betrayal and the media, as well as an uncompromising political novel. Cercas has yet again expanded our idea of what fiction can do' - Juan Gabriel Vasquez, author of The Secret History of Costaguana
The Outlaw Ocean
Author: Ian Urbina
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451492951
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 627
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of a vast, lawless, and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas. There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation. Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways—drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil, and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely. Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451492951
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 627
Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A riveting, adrenaline-fueled tour of a vast, lawless, and rampantly criminal world that few have ever seen: the high seas. There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and under no clear international authority, these immense regions of treacherous water play host to rampant criminality and exploitation. Traffickers and smugglers, pirates and mercenaries, wreck thieves and repo men, vigilante conservationists and elusive poachers, seabound abortion providers, clandestine oil-dumpers, shackled slaves and cast-adrift stowaways—drawing on five years of perilous and intrepid reporting, often hundreds of miles from shore, Ian Urbina introduces us to the inhabitants of this hidden world. Through their stories of astonishing courage and brutality, survival and tragedy, he uncovers a globe-spanning network of crime and exploitation that emanates from the fishing, oil, and shipping industries, and on which the world's economies rely. Both a gripping adventure story and a stunning exposé, this unique work of reportage brings fully into view for the first time the disturbing reality of a floating world that connects us all, a place where anyone can do anything because no one is watching.
Legendary Louisiana Outlaws
Author: Keagan LeJeune
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807162590
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807162590
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266
Book Description
From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.
When We Were Outlaws
Author: Jeanne Córdova
Publisher: Spinsters Ink Books
ISBN: 9781935226512
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
A sweeping memoir, a raw and intimate chronicle of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals. When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women's Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s. Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is "to the revolution" -to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life, she becomes an investigative reporter for the famous, underground L.A. Free Press and finds herself involved with covering the Weather Underground, Angela Davis; exposing neo-Nazi bomber Captain Joe Tomassi, and befriending Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the same time she is creating what will be the center of her revolutionary lesbian world: her own newsmagazine, The Lesbian Tide, destined to become the voice of the national lesbian feminist movement. By turns provocative and daringly honest, Cordova renders emblematic scenes of the era--ranging from strike protests to utopian music festivals, to underground meetings with radical fugitives--with period detail and evocative characters. For those who came of age in the '70s, and for those who weren't around but still ask 'What was it like?' -Outlaws takes you back to re-live it. It also offers insights about ethics, decision making and strategy, still relevant today. With an introduction by renowned lesbian historian Lillian Faderman, When We Were Outlaws paints a vivid portrait of activism and the search for self-identity, set against the turbulent landscape of multiple struggles for social change that swept hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets.
Publisher: Spinsters Ink Books
ISBN: 9781935226512
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
A sweeping memoir, a raw and intimate chronicle of a young activist torn between conflicting personal longings and political goals. When We Were Outlaws offers a rare view of the life of a radical lesbian during the early cultural struggle for gay rights, Women's Liberation, and the New Left of the 1970s. Brash and ambitious, activist Jeanne Córdova is living with one woman and falling in love with another, but her passionate beliefs tell her that her first duty is "to the revolution" -to change the world and end discrimination against gays and lesbians. Trying to compartmentalize her sexual life, she becomes an investigative reporter for the famous, underground L.A. Free Press and finds herself involved with covering the Weather Underground, Angela Davis; exposing neo-Nazi bomber Captain Joe Tomassi, and befriending Emily Harris of the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the same time she is creating what will be the center of her revolutionary lesbian world: her own newsmagazine, The Lesbian Tide, destined to become the voice of the national lesbian feminist movement. By turns provocative and daringly honest, Cordova renders emblematic scenes of the era--ranging from strike protests to utopian music festivals, to underground meetings with radical fugitives--with period detail and evocative characters. For those who came of age in the '70s, and for those who weren't around but still ask 'What was it like?' -Outlaws takes you back to re-live it. It also offers insights about ethics, decision making and strategy, still relevant today. With an introduction by renowned lesbian historian Lillian Faderman, When We Were Outlaws paints a vivid portrait of activism and the search for self-identity, set against the turbulent landscape of multiple struggles for social change that swept hundreds of thousands of Americans into the streets.
The Renegades
Author: T. Jefferson Parker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110150269X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
For fans of Michael Connelly and CJ Box, the second thrilling novel in the Charlie Hood series from New York Times bestseller and Edgar-award winner T. Jefferson Parker, now featuring an excerpt from his upcoming novel The Room of White Fire. Deputy Sheriff Charlie Hood cruises the dusty backroads of the new American West. But when his partner is shot dead and Hood is drafted to find the killer, the investigation takes him to places he never wanted to go-where there's no clear line between good and evil.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110150269X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 308
Book Description
For fans of Michael Connelly and CJ Box, the second thrilling novel in the Charlie Hood series from New York Times bestseller and Edgar-award winner T. Jefferson Parker, now featuring an excerpt from his upcoming novel The Room of White Fire. Deputy Sheriff Charlie Hood cruises the dusty backroads of the new American West. But when his partner is shot dead and Hood is drafted to find the killer, the investigation takes him to places he never wanted to go-where there's no clear line between good and evil.
The Compton Cowboys
Author: Walter Thompson-Hernandez
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062910620
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
“Thompson-Hernández's portrayal of Compton's black cowboys broadens our perception of Compton's young black residents, and connects the Compton Cowboys to the historical legacy of African Americans in the west. An eye-opening, moving book.”—Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures “Walter Thompson-Hernández has written a book for the ages: a profound and moving account of what it means to be black in America that is awe inspiring in its truth-telling and limitless in its empathy. Here is an American epic of black survival and creativity, of terrible misfortune and everyday resilience, of grace, redemption and, yes, cowboys.”— Junot Díaz, Pulitzer prize-winning author of This is How You Lose Her A rising New York Times reporter tells the compelling story of The Compton Cowboys, a group of African-American men and women who defy stereotypes and continue the proud, centuries-old tradition of black cowboys in the heart of one of America’s most notorious cities. In Compton, California, ten black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African-American horse riders for decades. To most people, Compton is known only as the home of rap greats NWA and Kendrick Lamar, hyped in the media for its seemingly intractable gang violence. But in 1988 Mayisha Akbar founded The Compton Jr. Posse to provide local youth with a safe alternative to the streets, one that connected them with the rich legacy of black cowboys in American culture. From Mayisha’s youth organization came the Cowboys of today: black men and women from Compton for whom the ranch and the horses provide camaraderie, respite from violence, healing from trauma, and recovery from incarceration. The Cowboys include Randy, Mayisha’s nephew, faced with the daunting task of remaking the Cowboys for a new generation; Anthony, former drug dealer and inmate, now a family man and mentor, Keiara, a single mother pursuing her dream of winning a national rodeo championship, and a tight clan of twentysomethings--Kenneth, Keenan, Charles, and Tre--for whom horses bring the freedom, protection, and status that often elude the young black men of Compton. The Compton Cowboys is a story about trauma and transformation, race and identity, compassion, and ultimately, belonging. Walter Thompson-Hernández paints a unique and unexpected portrait of this city, pushing back against stereotypes to reveal an urban community in all its complexity, tragedy, and triumph. The Compton Cowboys is illustrated with 10-15 photographs.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062910620
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
“Thompson-Hernández's portrayal of Compton's black cowboys broadens our perception of Compton's young black residents, and connects the Compton Cowboys to the historical legacy of African Americans in the west. An eye-opening, moving book.”—Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures “Walter Thompson-Hernández has written a book for the ages: a profound and moving account of what it means to be black in America that is awe inspiring in its truth-telling and limitless in its empathy. Here is an American epic of black survival and creativity, of terrible misfortune and everyday resilience, of grace, redemption and, yes, cowboys.”— Junot Díaz, Pulitzer prize-winning author of This is How You Lose Her A rising New York Times reporter tells the compelling story of The Compton Cowboys, a group of African-American men and women who defy stereotypes and continue the proud, centuries-old tradition of black cowboys in the heart of one of America’s most notorious cities. In Compton, California, ten black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African-American horse riders for decades. To most people, Compton is known only as the home of rap greats NWA and Kendrick Lamar, hyped in the media for its seemingly intractable gang violence. But in 1988 Mayisha Akbar founded The Compton Jr. Posse to provide local youth with a safe alternative to the streets, one that connected them with the rich legacy of black cowboys in American culture. From Mayisha’s youth organization came the Cowboys of today: black men and women from Compton for whom the ranch and the horses provide camaraderie, respite from violence, healing from trauma, and recovery from incarceration. The Cowboys include Randy, Mayisha’s nephew, faced with the daunting task of remaking the Cowboys for a new generation; Anthony, former drug dealer and inmate, now a family man and mentor, Keiara, a single mother pursuing her dream of winning a national rodeo championship, and a tight clan of twentysomethings--Kenneth, Keenan, Charles, and Tre--for whom horses bring the freedom, protection, and status that often elude the young black men of Compton. The Compton Cowboys is a story about trauma and transformation, race and identity, compassion, and ultimately, belonging. Walter Thompson-Hernández paints a unique and unexpected portrait of this city, pushing back against stereotypes to reveal an urban community in all its complexity, tragedy, and triumph. The Compton Cowboys is illustrated with 10-15 photographs.