by Julian Sher, William Marsden
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| List Price: | $26.95 |
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| Lowest New Price: | $26.76 |
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Product Description
The award-winning authors of The Road to Hell: How the Biker Gangs Are Conquering Canada bring us a definitive, up-to-the-minute account of the Hells Angels and the international biker network.
Marsden and Sher explain how the expansion of America’s foremost motorcycle gang has allowed this once ragtag group of rebels, outcasts and felons to become one of the world’s most sophisticated criminal organizations. While the media has continued to toast the Hells Angels California leader, Sonny Barger, as an American legend, the facts tell another story – they are America’s major crime export. With an estimated 2,500 full-patch members in 25 countries, the Hells Angels have inspired a global subculture of biker gangs that are among the most feared and violent underworld players.
Angels of Death takes readers to Arizona, inside the biggest American police undercover operation to infiltrate the bikers; to British Columbia where wealthy bikers dominate the organized crime pyramid; to Australia where the “bikies” shoot it out with police; to Curaçao where terrorist organizations funnel drugs to Dutch bikers; and to the streets of Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki where a murderous biker war saw rocket attacks and bombs turn Scandinavia into a war zone.
For the first time, police officers who have infiltrated biker gangs tell their secrets – revealing the challenges, fears and horrors they’ve discovered going undercover. Sher and Marsden take the reader behind the latest headlines to tell the story of how the Hells Angels became so powerful, and how the police – with only a few successes – have tried to stop them.
Excerpt from Angels of Death:
Three murderous evenings, three different continents, three faces of the Angels of death: the killing of innocents, the killing of fellow bikers, and the killing of cops.
Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of lives ruined, brains fried, bodies withered by the methamphetamines, cocaine and other drugs pushed by the bikers.
And yet while the body count kept mounting, Sonny Barger, the Californian patriarch and international leader of the Hells Angels, was being feted by the international media as he promoted his latest bestselling book. Even the usually thoughtful British press fell for the rebel Yankee. The Times called him, “affable, big-hearted, warm.”
The Independent labelled him an “American legend.”
And in many ways he is.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Lot's of research, but biased, 2008-10-23
I have read numerous books on bikers, and this is one of the better reads. But like all books on the subject matter, it seems to go something like this.
Guy patches into club. Guy gets involved with drugs and needs money. Guy gets busted by the cops. Guy turns evidence, and everyone else goes to jail but him.
Cop patches into club. Cop sets up deals. Cop takes their money, arrests them for having the goods.
Face it, if you look hard enough anywhere you're going to find what you're looking for. You press the right buttons, you get a violent reaction. This is true of any group. You want to see violent, watch cocaine cowboys. Billions of dollars, and 1000s murdered in cold blood. And yet, alot of these people are back on the streets.
The biggest part of the problem is that things like this are exactly what the books are saying. When guys like this, who sometimes are in positions of authority in the club, promote stuff like the violence that happens and then turn on everyone else, ( Tait, who bought explosives, stole guns, and basically set up the thing that got the Angels indicted on federal charges ) you have to think about where the constitutionality and presumption of innocence come into play.
How long can law enforcement persecute bikers? They backed people up with drug problems, violent pasts, and made them look credible to the biker community, so that they could find trouble. Drug kingpins don't live in trailers, man. Wave enough money in someone's face, and dare them to do it; it's leading them into jail.
Now, I'm not saying that bikers, particularly 1%ers, are choirboys. On the contrary, they are the baddest of the bad. But mostly, they want to be left alone. They're not out to terrorize society, they mostly avoid it. When the government supplies them with drugs and weapons so that they can arrest them for having drugs and weapons, it looks like entrapment. And it is in the book, and the charges get pled down to almost nothing.
Ever think that if the cops weren't looking for problems there wouldn't be any? I don't know. I do find it a fascinating read, but it's hard to tell the complete story of this without the gonverment revealing at least part of it's hand. And therein lies the rub.
Ride free.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A Global View Of Several Outlaw Biker Clubs Expansion, 2008-09-01
A first glance you would think this book is about the Hells Angels in particular. However, it is more of a primer about several of the major outlaw clubs here in the US and internationally. I found it interesting to see how all of the clubs tear into each other in their expansion for "market" or territory. If the ATF accounts are true and the book is accurate, then you will be amazed at just how organized these clubs have become in the past 20 years. No longer are they just the rowdy "good ol' boys" tearing down the highway looking for some good times. They have basically become international corporations with trademarked branding only a lot more dangerous than Sam Palmisano and the IBM "blue crew". Although, sometimes I wonder...
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Angels Of Death - Best OMG Book Written, 2008-03-22
Written as if it were being put together for the History channel. I would put this just above "Under and Alone".
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 Riveting and Dangerous, 2007-07-08
The Angels of Death is riveting book about the Hells Angels quest for global domination. Reads like a thriller where the most exciting part is about ATF's undercover operation. Well recommended and hard to put down.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Angels of Death: Inside the Biker Gangs' Crime Empire, 2007-03-31
good account of the Hells Angels activity, related in an entertaining manner.
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