Our Guys

In March 1989 a group of teenage boys lured a retarded girl into a basement in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and gang-raped her. Glen Ridge was the kind of peaceful, affluent suburb many Americans dream about. The rapists were its most popular high school athletes. And although rumors of the crime quickly spread through the town, weeks passed before anyone saw fit to report it to the police. What made these boys capable of brutalizing a girl that some of them had known since childhood? Why did so many of their elders deny the rape and rally around its perpetrators? To solve this riddle, the Edgar award-winning author Bernard Lefkowitz conducted years of research and more than two hundred interviews. The result is not just a wrenching story of crime and punishment, but a hauntingly nuanced portrait of America's jock culture and the hidden world of unrestrained adolescent sexuality. ANew York TimesNotable Book of the Year ALos Angeles TimesPrize Finalist An Edgar Finalist

Bernard Lefkowitz, an Edgar award-winning author, has written three earlier books on social issues, including <i>Tough Change: Growing Up on Your Own in America. </i> He teaches journalism at Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. His articles have appeared in  <i>Esquire, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, New York, Psychology Today, Ladies' Home Journal, The Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, </i> and  <i>The Los Angeles Times. </i>