Originally published in 1927, Frederic Thrasher’s The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago is a panoramic, multilayered, richly detailed account of youth gangs—a milestone text of the Chicago School of Sociology. The most widely available version of The Gang is a highly edited edition published in 1963, which contained an extensive new introduction by noted sociologist James Short. I argue here for a return to the original text, as well as the work of Thrasher more broadly. Rereading this classic text in full, original form, I maintain, gives us fresh perspective on contemporary research and commentary on gang life. So commonly (now) the purview of the postpositivist and highly delimited field of criminology, The Gang returns us to questions of radical context, the multiple webs of influence and association that so marked studies of the period—a move long overdue.
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