The author seems to have had two main themes to the book: first, the description of the crime, the people involved, the investigation, and the trial; second, the description of the culture of Glen Ridge.

I am writing here to comment on the second theme, from the point of view of a person who was born and raised in Glen Ridge, contemporaneously with all of the people involved. Regarding the first theme, I will therefore be brief: the book was phenomenal in this respect, and the perpetrators were indeed known scumballs well before the crime took place.

However, I could imagine, if I were not born and raised in Glen Ridge, reading this book and believing that the author's take on the culture of Glen Ridge was accurate as well. This is simply not the case.

The book claims that sports were the be all and end all of the town's existance. Highest on the totem pole were football and wrestling, the sports in which most of the perpetrators participated. Any boy in Glen Ridge who was not a jock was either a jockette (i.e. a wannabe, a boot licking hanger-on; "-ette" does not imply gender), or nothing. Male atheletes were portrayed to be the town's darling sons, who enjoyed all the priveleges and accolades, while boys who were not atheletes had no respect and no social lives, and their Ridger parents probably wondered why they couldn't play football like those nice Scherzer kids.

The town's collective view on girls is portrayed as being that they are nothing more than trophies that rightfully go to the jocks, to be used as they saw fit.

In reality, our football team was considered a joke, our wrestling team was largely unknown (I couldn't tell you anything about it, other than the fact that it existed), and while there was certainly this group of jocks and jockettes who acted like they owned the school, they were just their own little clique who were usually laughed at by all the other cliques - just like any clique.

I never felt pressure to join a sports team; I never felt that nobody respected my non-atheletic skills; I never felt that the school didn't care about academics (quite the opposite, actually); I never felt that the town as a whole treated girls like subhumans.

Perhaps these things were just my opinion, not shared by others, but I think that I would have noticed if nobody but me thought that the football team was a joke, for example.

The book makes a big deal of things like the fact that the school's principal, vice principal, and atheletic director were all ex-football coaches. Well of course the atheletic director is going to be something like an ex-football coach; as for the principal and the vice principal, I never knew that they had been football coaches, until I read this book. That is, they didn't let it noticably influence them in their jobs; it was not a big deal.

I would have absolutely hated growing up in the Glen Ridge described in this book. I did not hate growing up in the real Glen Ridge. I liked it.

This is a frightening and important book. The author's perspective reminds us that this horrific rape of a retarded young woman was not an aberration, but a consequence of a white, rich, patriarchal value system embodied to extreme degrees by Glen Ridge. Families, teachers, and finally, the judiciary, regarded the crime as a minor incident, a "coming-of-age" ritual for their thuggish, sociopathic fair-haired sons who, were it not for their race and social status, would certainly otherwise be viewed as a violent gang. This book is imperative reading for anyone still so naive as to think that race, wealth, and gender don't determine one's fate in the United States. On the less distressing side, there are some inspirational portraits here, especially of the New Jersey deputy DA who fought to get the case even brought to trial. He emerges as a hero for women, the disempowered, and the mentally challenged. Sad to say he seems one of very few. It amazes me to this day that people still up in arms about "OJ" have totally forgotten this tragic case.

Bernard Lefkowitz' Our Guys made me fear for my children, and shudder at bedroom community suburban America. The story of the Glen Ridge, New Jersey rape and subsequent trial, this book recounts how the seemingly anointed star male athletes in this upper-class town lured into a basement then sexually assaulted a retarded teenaged girl. Above all else, Leflowitz' book demonstrates the dangers of complacency. For years before the rape, the boys involved had been allowed to "get away with" ever-escalating misbehaviors, including conduct for which, if I knew my children were involved, would be visited with the most severe consequences. No such consequences ever befell the star athletes of Glen Ridge, with everyone turning a blind eye to problems and muttering the mantra, "boys will be boys." This book is extremely explicit in both descriptions and language, and is not for the prude. Likewise, I suspect it may offend (or appear unbalanced) to those of the "athletic supporter" mindset, including the fathers and sons of star (and seemingly exemplary) players. Nonetheless, Leflowitz gives us a story that must be told, in clear, compelling prose making this book hard to put down.