[The literary qualities of "Down These Mean Streets"] are primitive. Yet it has an undeniable power that I think comes from the fact that it is a report from the guts and heart of a submerged population group, itself submerged in the guts and hearts of our cities. It claims our attention and emotional response because of the honesty and pain of a life led in outlaw, fringe status, where the dream is always to escape.

There is, in reports such as this, a certain lack of suspense. The reader knows from the start that the survivor who wrote the book is one of those who got away. There remains the question of how the escape was worked. And there is the fascination of being told of it in a special language created in conflict….

What I, for one, did not know until I read Piri Thomas's tough...