The Rat That Got Away: A Bronx Memoir

The Rat That Got Away is an inspiring story of one man’s odyssey from the streets of the Bronx to a life as a professional athlete and banker in Europe, but it is also provides a unique vantage point on the history of the Bronx and sheds new light on a neglected period in American urban history.

Allen Jones grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx at a time—the 1950s—when that neighborhood was a place of optimism and hope for upwardly mobile Black and Latino families. Brought ...