Skinhead Confessions: From Hate To Hope Paperback – April 14, 2008

I got his book and and read it cover to cover without EVER putting it down. This is a book that needs to be required reading in every school. Gang violence and gang activity will never stop but we can do our best to make sure that it is not our children who are a part of it. Our children and the children of our friends and familes are the most important thing. JT experience is a very intellegent person who was able to be not only sucked into this life but to be a leader of its cause. If you think that it can't happen to your child you are sadly mistaken. As parents or simply as adults we try not to stiffle our childrens creativity and individualty but this does not mean we should turn a blind eye how they are taking the level of trust we provide them. One thing remains consistant about people, we all want to be right and to be liked. Some times it easier to to liked by just doing what everyone else is doing. JT talks about adapting a cause because he had been convinced by the people that he chose to surround himself with. Thats all it took.In my opinion JT is wealth of knowledge and can be a huge asset to anyone who is willing to listen to his message with an open mind. Please give this book a chance. Whether you are a parent of a teenage or a teenager please make sure that you read this book so you can keep from making the same mistakes that others do.

I enjoyed this book. It gives an insight into an evil (yet brilliant) recruiter for the skinhead movement. It also shows that there is always hope and no matter how bad one is, they can change if they want to. Bad childhood or not, a bad adult is a result of their own choices. Toward the end, TJ mentioned his religious conversion, but the book is not preachy at all.

I was a friend of TJ Leyden. He was a very fine human being with an important message. His story helps people to understand how hate groups recruit and manipulate people. The fact that he realized the truth placed him at risk. Many times we would be speaking at the same venues and TJ would require special protection due to bounty put on his head by hate groups. His message of peace and love is much needed today. His books are very important to anyone who truly wants to learn and understand how and why such groups occur and persist in a world where it should not be.

This book was an interesting but it feels like TJ spends a lot of feeding his ego. His message is definitely important, but I feel like it gets a little lost in him repeatedly stating how tough/important/powerful/influential/brilliant he is. There are a lot of parts of his story that he seems to gloss over. It does not seem to go very deep into his emotions or his thought process, he spends a lot of time conveying how he is the best at everything he does. The best recruiter, the best fighter, the best public speaker. It's hard to feel any sympathy or empathy for him.Regardless, its a good read. His story is interesting, if he was as deeply imbedded into the racist ideology as he claims to have been and made such a radical change, then good for him as it could not have been easy. The book is fairly easy read, it delves into what is unfortunately what most people perceive skinheads to be. Its unfortunate that all skins get lumped into the same category as the white supremacist/separatist skins. There are others out there.

Full disclosure - I am friends with the co-author, Bridget Cook, however, I really loved this book no matter who wrote it. It opened my eyes to a few things:1. That even someone who thinks they are "dead" when it comes to emotion can still be reached.2. That evil spreads and is in disguise and to watch for signs with my kids that I never thought about.3. That these transformational stories need to continue to be told to inspire people who are trapped and thinking about escape.Thank you, TJ and Bridget, for being willing to tell this story.

This guy is a joke. He's terribly sorry for all the bad things he's done yet he LOVES to tell u how he was the best at it OVER and OVER again. In fact, he flies around the country making his career being an "ex-skinhead". Tsk tsk. If u don't want to be involved in the (bowel)Movement anymore, fine. Believe me i understand, but you dont have to become a poster boy for the other side just because you CRAVE media attention. Also, all you anti's posting on here just dry up. Everyones sick of your "were the real skinheads" crap. It's revisionist history just as bad as anything this guy might've said. This guy was skin probably long before any of you KIDS were born. The only kind of good, semi-entertaining part of this book is a description of the old gang aspect of the early part of the scene. I can remember it popping off before things changed big time by the mid 90's. I dont agree it was over drugs though (they were always there, it just varied from crew to crew, or area).

The book is great. T.J. has a great, educational, and inspiring story to tell. The book itself gets the five stars from me. The formatting for the Kindle edition sucked though. Paragraphs were off. Letters that should be upper case were lower case, etc.

I went College in the mid 80's in the Inland Empire - UC Riverside, this book aong w/ a couple on "The Punk Rocks" gangs encapuslate the time period - RAGE - Dissenfranchised Youth minds wide open to the propganda of hate. A solid read of a corrupted mind and aorad to redemption out of the hate landscape.