Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Top-notch ethnography. Finnegan's technique is to abandon all pretense of objectivity and live with his subjects for months at a time. His commitment, sensitivity, and steadfast refusal to condescend produces amazing results. The people profiled in Cold New World are mostly teenagers, and are mostly on the losing end of some broader trend of social decay. In the hands of a lesser writer, the impoverished inner city blacks, Latino gang members, and Southern California neo-Nazi punks that Finnegan depicts would have quickly devolved into sociological stereotypes. But Finnegan keeps the focus tight, so that social conditions are understood through depictions of specific, real personalities, instead of the other way around.