Ice

Ice: a memoir of gangster life and redemption--from South Central to Hollywood by Ice T and Douglas Century  251 pp.

If you can get past the incessant use of f-bombs and the n-word, this is a really good book. Rapper Ice T (Tracy Marrow) tells his story from being an a child in Newark, losing both parents by age 7, growing up in L.A. South Central, joining a gang and committing crimes to becoming one of the first hip-hop mega-stars, battling Congress, the police, and the NRA over the song "Cop Killer," and his transition to movies and one of the most successful television franchises, "Law & Order." Ice pulls no punches in this book. His brutal honesty about gang life in the 70s & 80s and what gang life has become now is an eye opener to anyone who didn't grow up in that life. Basically, this is a tale of a boy growing into a man, making mistakes, and learning a lot of hard lessons along the way to his success as an actor, a father, and a husband. He now spends a lot of his time lecturing and speaking to organizations like the Boys' & Girls' Clubs in an effort to keep kids out of gang life. I liked this book and I like the man Ice T has become.