RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksThroughout, Bloch proves himself a witness of extreme perceptivity, but he is more than that. He is also a tremendous writer of prose, clear-eyed in his intent to explain difficult circumstances, and he does so quickly and efficiently so that they might be understood by those who do not share the same background. His writing thrums with the keenness of earned insight on everything from the organized money-making schemes that fuel late-night bombing sessions to the realities of social structures in impoverished neighborhoods ... ultimately a memoir tempered by the disciplined lens of ethnographic study. The author describes this practice as \'mining memory to connect real-world experiences with scholarly insight.\' And yet, rather than weighing the text down, or rendering it less readable, this added layer of insight is illuminating in its ability to connect the author’s experiences to historical and social forces around him. The applied critical lens allows its author a degree of detachment necessary to relate the frequently painful experiences of his youth. (In fact, it is only in the author’s note that Bloch briefly describes the emotional toll that this work took.) Clear and sharp, packed with facts and difficult-to-shake details, the work seeks not to push the reader into sympathy, but something much more important: to promote understanding, and even empathy ... it deserves direct admittance into the nonfiction canon of Los Angeles literature alongside such works as Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside (2015) and Luis J. Rodriguez’s Always Running (1993).
