Williams, Terry :

Sociologist Terry Williams, Ph.D., coauthor of Growing Up Poor, is the joint recipient of a MacArthur foundation grant to study the culture of housing projects. The completion of The Cocaine Kids was accomplished during Williams's appointment at the Conservation of Human Resources at Columbia University.

"A breathtaking ethnographic account of young drug dealers � [Terry Williams's] intimate portrait of these kids' routines doesn't make for easy answers, but he lets us get to know them and how they got involved in the drug trade."

--Boston Herald

"Williams makes abundantly clear in his chronicle of the lives of eight young dealers who operate in and around Spanish Harlem, the vaunted war on drugs proposed by President Bush largely misses the point."

--The Washington Post

"Mr. Williams combines his talent as a keen observer with thoughtful, sophisticated analysis.� (This) eye-opening account should be widely read, for it provides some of the understanding that could help this nation to formulate the complex policies and programs to assure that the inner-city youngsters coming of age in the 1990s will not be doomed to repeat the sad struggle of the cocaine kids."

--New York Times Book Review

Perseus Books Group Web Site, December, 2001

Since 1982, sociologist Terry Williams has spent days, weeks, and months "hanging out" with a teenage cocaine ring in cocaine bars, after-hours clubs, on street corners, in crack houses and in their homes. The picture he creates in The Cocaine Kids is the story behind the headlines. The lives of these young dealers in the fast lane of the underground economy emerge in depth and color on the pages of this book.

Introduction
The Setup
The Cocaine Trade
The Kids
The Scene
The Kids Move On