Willie Bosket was charming, magnetic, and brilliant. He was also the most cold-blooded criminal the New York State penal system had ever seen. By the time he was in his teens, he had committed over two hundred armed robberies and twenty-five stabbings. Fox Butterfield examines the heritage of violence that followed Bosket's family from their days in slavery in South Carolina to the present.


From Publishers Weekly
Through the history of an African American family, from slavery in South Carolina to its dissolution in contemporary Harlem, journalist Butterfield probes at the root causes of the cycle of violence. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In his early 30s, Willie James Bosket Jr., viewed by many as New York's most violent criminal, is confined in tightly secured isolation in a Catskill prison. New York Times reporter Butterfield interviewed Willie and did extensive research on him, his forebears, and the historic use in this country of violence in defense of personal honor. A high I.Q. and often appealing demeanor have not mitigated Willie's unrepentant, violently aggressive behavior. "The boy no one could help," he has been mostly institutionalized since age nine. His family life was abysmal: he never met his criminal father, his mother was a negative influence, and he inherited a history of law-flouting male aggression. Butterfield delineates the complex elements of this young African American's life gone irretrievably awry. Highly recommended for college level and up.-?Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, AlfredCopyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.



"An extraordinary book...A stimulating and chilling account of violence in America."


From Booklist
Butterfield presents a fascinating discussion of American violence. He suggests that contemporary black violence is a tradition inherited from white southern violence, theorizing that white honor, slave reputation, and black respect are codes capable of provoking violence if impugned, or even slightly stepped on. Butterfield considered closely the political, social, judicial, and racial climates influencing violence, particularly their impact on the Boskets, a black U.S. family. Butterfield follows this family from slavery to the present, focusing on the last two generations--father Butch and son Willie. His account of one of America's most dangerous yet brilliant families is both powerful and shocking. And although he winds up censuring the American juvenile and criminal justice systems, which failed two generations of Bosket men, the Bosket family history of violence begs examination of the criminal psyche; the case does suggest that genetics may predispose some to a violent lifestyle. Detailing historical events that influenced this family's inability to control their violent impulses, Butterfield presents his exposewith flair and conviction. Lillian Lewis



"A milestone. This book answers many of the important questions of the decade. It is indeed a remarkable achievement."


Book Description
Considered by many to be the most dangerous inmate in the history of the New York penal system, Willie Bosket is a brilliant, violent man who began his criminal career at age five. His slaying of two subway riders at fifteen led to the passage of the first law in the nation allowing teenagers to be tried as adults. Yet sadly, Willie is not an aberration within the Bosket family--but rather the latest in a long line of brutal, exceptionally intelligent malefactors who were driven by circumstances, racism, and a distinctly American craving for respect by any means necessary. In this groundbreaking work, award-winning journalist Fox Butterfield traces a troubled family's history back to the days of slavery in an attempt to get to the roots of the violence endemic in our society.

ANNOTATION

From the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of China: Alive in the Bitter Sea comes the poignant story of how the tradition of white Southern violence and racism has long affected and still haunts one black family. Butterfield follows the Bosket family of Edgefield County, South Carolina, from the days of slavery to the present. Photos.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A startling examination of an American heritage of violence - a legacy from the pre-Revolutionary white rural South to today's urban America - that helps answer the question of how America became so violent. The tradition is reflected in the experiences of one black family, the Boskets, from the days of slavery to the present. This tragic family history culminates in the twentieth century with the seemingly inevitable destruction of two potentially valuable lives: those of Willie Bosket and his father, each first incarcerated at age nine, each ultimately convicted of murder. The saga begins with Willie Bosket's first known American ancestors, slaves in Edgefield, South Carolina - a place of epic violence, a place where white men were quick to fight to the death for the minutest trespass on their honor. Finally, we see how the lava-flow of violence, and its explosive admixture along the way with white racism, erupts in the lives of the Boskets of our own day - especially Willie Bosket, whose IQ breached the genius level (his father was the only person ever to earn a Ph.D. in prison) and whose boyhood charm was such that some of his elementary school teachers had visions of him as president of the United States. And yet, by Willie's own count he had by adolescence committed two hundred armed robberies and twenty-five stabbings. In his fifteenth year he shot and killed two men on the Manhattan subway. At age twenty-five he stabbed a prison guard he did not know. For him as for his father before him, prison has become his whole world, his surrogate mother. He has been deemed the most violent criminal in New York State history. Constantly manacled because he is considered so dangerous, the dazzlingly articulate Willie nevertheless seemed, when Fox Butterfield first met him, to have made prison his palace. Trying to make sense of Willie's life, of his father's life, of the Bosket family history back through time, Butterfield reveals the roots of the violence that thr

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Wide-ranging and somewhat unwieldy, this ambitious book tells a challenging, memorable story about race, violence and our American future. Investigating the case of Willie Bosket, whose crimes as a New York juvenile presaged a surge of youth violence and spurred much tougher prosecution of juveniles, New York Times correspondent Butterfield (China: Alive in the Bitter Sea) delved into the Bosket family background. He argues that the white Southern mentality of easily aggrieved honor has made its way through time and the descendants of slaves, transmuted into the similar hair-trigger ethos of inner-city streets. While Butterfield's thesis doesn't completely convince (what about the barrios or the wild west?), his reporting on the lives, crimes and prison experiences of Willie and his father, Butch, is painfully gripping. Finally released after reforming himself in prison, Butch couldn't handle freedom and killed himself as police pursued him. Willie, in prison for life, considers himself ``a monster created by the system.'' In an epilogue, the author warns that building prisons won't solve our crime problem, and he proposes several policies-including intervention programs to help adolescent delinquents-to prevent future carnage. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)

Library Journal