Description: "Hendrik Hartog's lively investigation of the legal histories of Progressive reform, childhood, criminality, repression, and free speech revolves around the mysterious Jack Robbins, an iconoclastic social reformer dedicated to the ideals of virtuous boyhood. In early twentieth-century Chicago, Robbins's Boys' Brotherhood Republic sought to keep boys out of the clutches of both vice and the nascent carceral state. The curiosity of Robbins's story is compounded by the racially and politically charged legal case that arose from his will, which established the extent to which last wishes must conform with dominant social values. Hartog crafts a twisty and engaging book full of surprising connections and persistent mysteries"--
Brief description: Hendrik Hartog is Princeton University's Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Emeritus. For more than a decade, he directed Princeton's American Studies program. He is the author of Man and Wife in America, Someday All This Will Be Yours, and The Trouble with Minna, among other books.
Review Quotes: "Why would a man living in the midst of the anti Communism mania of the 1959s leave his self-created wealth to provide for support of children whose parents had been convicted of political crime? Hartog's curiosity about this small matter leads to virtuoso research and now this fascinating book shining a light on inventive efforts to encourage young people, prevent crime and mobilize volunteers to help. It also offers intriguing glimpses of the fledgling industries of advertising, journalism, animation and ice cream franchises - and idealism, and human kindness remote from the prosecutors, social workers, and criminal systems of mass incarceration. Nobody's Boy and His Pals is a gem!"--Martha Minow, author of 'When Should Law Forgive?'