Customer Reviews

Hacker Cracker: A Journey from the Mean Streets of Brooklyn to the Frontiers of Cyberspace

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Insipid. When I saw this book I was interested by it seeing that Ejovi Nuwere was from Brooklyn where I grew up. Sounded like a good story...I'll read it I said.
Well, I was very disappointed. The book might as well be titled "My pride in leaving the inner-city and becoming a proto-yuppie". The writing of the book is at the level of Sports Illustrated for Kids and the depth of the book rises to a level little higher than Britney Spears pop music. Yes, he was from the 'hood but there is no emotion in his writing, no grit. The characters in his life seem plastic and secondary...certainly they are not, but Ejovi relegated them to this role so he could tell his American Dream how to become a content yuppie story. Let's hear more about the thoughts of his mother, his uncle, his brother, his neighborhood. Or perhaps this is too much to ask of him... Did he even know what was going on in the world or was he too plugged into his own egotistical cyber world that he did not live in the real world? As he said, he had a choice...to turn outward and be bad or turn inward and be essentially a reclusive person. What a choice...just imagine if Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X said that. Well, Ejovi turned inward and this self-centerdness is evident in this book.
If you want to learn about life in the inner-city pick up Sanyika Shakur's autobiography "Monster" or a Tupac Shakur CD, but please don't bother with this soulless, puerile book.

Ejovi Nuwere is from Bedford Stuyvesant a neighborhood in brooklyn he comes from somewhat of a brokenhome doesnot really know his father and has a mother who does just about anything in the world for her children but she is a drug addict and has Aids he lives with his grandmother uncle and brother and numerous others that hang out at his grandmothers apartment were something is always going on.

He faces the struggles most other intercity kids face with the gangs,drugs poverty and violence but he seems to pick up on the fact that the gangs and drugs are a losing way to go.In one part of the book while he attend a school for the performing arts he ends up joining a gang just for his own protection but it seem a somewhat differant type of gang besides the violence they where teaching the members. While in school he had a few brushes with some basic IBM computer but when he hooked up with the principal and asst. principal who had apple mac he started to develop a real interest in computer and this interest was fed by the uncle who also lived with who had a computer and would let Ejovi many 10-14 hour days on.
Along with another computer hacker he had met in school they begin getting into hacker chat rooms and learning and developing their skills and trying to make a name as is the thing to do in the hacker community.With his knowledge and desire to succede he ends starting to get jobs while still a teenager and as time goes on decides that full time may not be the way to go one thing for sure it does not pay the bills
Alot of the computer hacking involves stolen credit cards and manufactured cards one story when Ejovi couldnot stand it and decided to buy his own computer with a stolen number and has the computer delivered to a run down building nextdoor and the FBI ends up coming was pretty funny story.

This is a pretty good book about somebody having the drive and desire to succcede even living in tough and living through tough conditions and making it along the way he also takes up a form of kung fu.It was a little difficult at times understanding some of the computer stuff for a novice like me but there are definitions in the back of the book and he describes thing pretty good.

It attempts to be great but really nothing interesting. Mostly about his growing up in the bronx and if he does talk about computers then you have to know computer to know what he's talking about. I t tries to be good but fails because it's to much of a survey of his life in stead of a telling of it. skim over it if you can find it in your library but don't bother paying to read it because you'll surely be disappointed.

This is an amazing story of a young man who goes from nothing to something, using technology. After reading this I was inspired to do something with my life!

If you like hacking, if you like feel good stories, if you like excitement, this book has all of that!

A co-worker recommeded that I read this book, and, honestly, I did not have very high expectations. Much to my surprise, I found the book nearly impossible to put down. It is an intriguing tale of a boy who spends his days learning the ins and outs of "hacking". He is also forced to cope with the hardships of inner city life and with the fact that his mother is dying of AIDS. The book is hard to follow at times, especially for those who are not well-versed in computer terminology, but it still a worthwile read.

As the full title suggests, Ejovi Nuwere's Hacker Cracker: A Journey from the Mean Streets of Brooklyn to the Frontiers of Cyberspace is a coming of age story of a boy as he physically, emotionally and intellectually matures. He witnesses his mother slowly succumb to AIDS related complications, battles with the inner city street gangs, deals with family drama, and yields to unrelenting peer pressure. At one point in his young life, he attempts suicide and spends time in a mental ward. He shares his childhood life stories and admits how his first introduction to hacking was that on the side of wrongdoing (soliciting credit card numbers from unsuspecting online users). Through a twist of fate, he applies his skills toward good and goes legit in the field of computer security.

This story is an autobiography, however because the author is so young, the book spends a great deal of time discussing his days as an outcast in high school and his adventures in the different hacking groups and online communities. Although his computing exploits may be interesting to the "techies" of the world, I fear that lay people will struggle to retain interest during those sections of the book. More importantly, I think this novel is a testament to a man who could have easily fallen victim to his circumstances. He was/is largely self-taught and chose to use his intellect and street smarts to capitalize on his programming skills. This book is an inspirational read for young people as it demonstrates that alternatives and opportunities exist everywhere---one just has to be open and willing to consider the possibilities.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub, The Nubian Circle Book Club

Outstanding first work from Ejovi Nuwere.

The title "Hacker Cracker" suggests a story about computer crime. Indeed, the book is much more than that. It's a story of growing up in a crime ridden neighborhood. It's about the confidence gained from martial arts. It's about a boy coming of age. And - also - it's about the underground hacker culture.

This really is an amazing work from such a young author, even with the help of a veteran contributor. The insights are keen, and the ability to weave lessons from San Shou boxing through computer hacking through the revelations of the horror of 9/11 reveal an outstanding intellect and wisdom beyond the author's 20 years.

The book is a quick read, and appropriate for a much broader audience than just folks interested in computers. All the technical terms are clearly explained in the text and a glossary, and there is no assumption of advanced knowledge of computers.

Buy the book, read it, and enjoy it!

This book tells two stories--one of a young black man who was raised in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn and who became an accomplished computer hacker and then computer security expert for a New York company, and the other is the technical details of how he carried out his computer hacking. I was very interested in this young man's personal story, but the technical parts were beyond my comprehension and I found myself skipping several chapters and parts of chapters. If you are computer savvy, this book may be something you will really enjoy, but if not you may only enjoy the personal side of it, as I did.

First of all, this has to be the dumbest name for a book, ever. I mean, come on. You just have to wonder what they were thinking. As for the actual contents, well... Mr Nuwere certainly has some attention-keeping stories to recount, and he and Mr Chanoff do a workmanlike job of telling them, even if the writing doesn't reach out and grab the reader at any point. But considering Nuwere's impressive life--he went from an overcrowded apartment in Bed Stuy to a job in a Manhattan bank by the time he was in his early twenties--not a great deal of style is required to hold ones attention. Not often do we get to hear a personal account of what it's like to battle through inner-city neighborhoods and schools, and Nuwere does an impressive job of conveying the difficulties of his (and millions of other folks') situation, without making any kind of a play for sympathy. That's just how it is, he tells us. Nor, for that matter, are we often exposed to an inside account of the hacker community; and the book has some of that too, as Nuwere parlays his warez-trading experience in AOL chat-rooms into a part-time job managing security for a small ISP and ultimately into big-time employment in a bank IT department.

However, despite all this interesting stuff the book doesn't really hold together. For one thing, it's hard to write an autobiography when you haven't hit twenty-five; neither Nuwere nor Chanoff seem to know quite what's important in Nuwere's story, or if they think they do they don't do a particularly good job of presenting it. As a result, the book reads more like a series of vignettes than a consistent narrative, even as it takes us reasonably completely through all the events of Nuwere's life. There's the hard times as a young lad, there's the forays into computers, and at the end there's a fair amount about martial arts (Nuwere is also a San Shou kickboxing national champion); but the bits barely cohere into a linear story, let alone come together to illustrate any sort of point. The inclusion of a chapter dealing with the September 11th terrorist attacks at the end of the book, which seems to be trying to sum things up, doesn't help at all. Yes, you can say that not everyone's life is a coherent narrative, to say nothing of one that will offer elucidation and improvement to the common run of folks; but I say, not everyone's life gets published in book form. And this one doesn't quite work in book form.

I don't say don't read it at all. But the most compelling reason I would suggest for looking into it is to hear about Brooklyn schools and streets; if you're looking for an inside account of the hacker community you may well be disappointed. As you might be, I'm afraid, if you're just looking for an all-around good book.

Ejovi Nuwere is dangling outside a two-story building, gripped by the hand of his weeping teacher. A moment before he had jumped off the edge and now, hanging there, he belatedly decides that living on the edge is preferable to the air.

Hacker Cracker is the story of Ejovi Nuwere's life on the edge, or many edges: His world of drugs, gangs, and depression; the murky world of computer hackers; and his current life as a computer security expert.

This is an immensely satisfying story about an American life -- not hacking or computers.

We get a look at what happens when any person -- yes, even a young black kid from Bed Stuy -- becomes an expert at something the world needs, in this case, computer security. We see how excellence leads to opportunity. We see how a strong family has given a boy the tools he needs to become a man.

Ejovi and co-author David Chanoff do not reflect much on Ejovi's experiences and perhaps that is good. Ejovi Nuwere is still in his 20s and maybe it is too early to analyze. Yet, it is impossible not to wonder what he makes of all that has happened to him.

This book makes you want to have coffee with Ejovi and meet his grandmother, uncle, and stepfather. Just to hear what they have to say.

I liked Ejovi throughout the whole book, but I came to admire him after I read the last chapter, about his experiences at the World Trade Center on September 11. In this chapter, at last he gives us what we hope to learn from him -- and what we hope HE will learn. The end is a most satisfying beginning for Ejovi Nuwere's life on the edge.