Gangs in America III

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I read the 2nd edition of GIA and enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. This edition is very disappointing. A few of the chapters were informative AND kept me interested, but the majority of the book was a review of previous gang studies (as a reader/reviewer has stated already) and burdensome to go through. If there was any current information (the statistics may have been current), I don't think it was worth reading the entire book just to locate current information on gang activity in the U.S. I'm using this book as a textbook for a class I am teaching (I assumed it would be similar the GIA 2nd edition), but I will definitely change books next semester. If I didn't gain anything from this book, I don't think my students will learn from it.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I read the 2nd edition of GIA and enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. This edition is very disappointing. A few of the chapters were informative AND kept me interested, but the majority of the book was a review of previous gang studies (as a reader/reviewer has stated already) and burdensome to go through. If there was any current information (the statistics may have been current), I don't think it was worth reading the entire book just to locate current information on gang activity in the U.S. I'm using this book as a textbook for a class I am teaching (I assumed it would be similar the GIA 2nd edition), but I will definitely change books next semester. If I didn't gain anything from this book, I don't think my students will learn from it.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing New
Review: This is Huff's 3rd edition of the book. The first one published in 1990 included cutting-edge research and was really great!! The second edition was not as good (since it did not offer too much cutting-edge knowledge) but had some great informative studies. The third edition is by far, the worst. Most of the 18 chapters are literature reviews and offer nothing significant to our knowledge of gangs. If there is a 4th edition published, I hope to see qualitative or quantitative empirical research and by different authors NOT included in editions 1 through 3.