Martín Sánchez Jankowski is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Chicano/Latino Policy Project Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley.

"The value of this extraordinary book . . . is that it offers bold and fresh thinking on a subject that desperately needs it. . . . It helps demystify gangs, presenting them as human organizations with human members, not as evil or pitiful creatures to be either despised or patronized."—Christian Science Monitor

"Vivid, lively, and yet theoretically informed, a triumph of patient and sustained fieldwork. . . . Jankowski presents the gang and its members not as pathological departures from social norms, but as shrewd and resourceful operators."—Michael Lipsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Islands in the Street fills a wide gap in the literature on gangs. Jankowski's innovative model of gang participation and organization is important and elegant, guaranteeing that this will be the book on gangs for the next ten years, if not longer."—Ruth Horowitz, University of Delaware

Winner, Robert E. Park Award, Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association
Winner, Best Book in Crime and Delinquency, Society for the Study of Social Problems