Review by New York Times Review
AMERICAN PRISON: A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment, by Shane Bauer. (Penguin Press, $28.) For his latest book, Bauer, an investigative journalist, went undercover as a guard at a private prison in Louisiana. His alarming, riveting exposé portrays a multibillion industry plagued by violence, corruption, deprivation and incompetence. CRUDO, by Olivia Laing. (Norton, $21.) Written with bristling intelligence, this debut novel by a British writer (whose nonfiction books include meditations on drinking and urban loneliness) pays homage to the iconoclastic author Kathy Acker, creating a pastiche of voices and identities. TRANSCRIPTION, by Kate Atkinson. (Little, Brown, $28.) In this inventive thriller, a naive young secretary lands in the middle of a clandestine fifth-column operation run by MI5 in World War II London, where she is recruited to transcribe the recorded meetings of Nazi sympathizers. WAITING FOR EDEN, by Elliot Ackerman. (Knopf, $22.95.) Ackerman's short, minimalist third novel is a journey through the traumas, betrayals and ecstasies of contemporary warfare and the multiple lives touched and sometimes shattered by one combat injury or death. THE DINOSAUR ARTIST: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy, by Paige Williams. (Hachette, $28.) Williams, a New Yorker staff writer, tells the bizarre story of a man caught smuggling a stolen Tyrannosaurus skeleton into America. It connects her with the dark network of people trafficking in pilfered fossils and takes her all the way to Mongolia. THE END OF THE MOMENT WE HAD, by Toshiki Okada. Translated by Sam Malissa. (Pushkin, paper, $13.95.) In two novellas about Japan's growing population of economically and emotionally disenfranchised youth, the celebrated playwright Okada captures the ennui that has paralyzed a generation. FOUNDRYSIDE, by Robert Jackson Bennett. (Crown, $27.) This magnificent, mind-blowing fantasy - the first volume of a trilogy - follows a thief hoping to pull off one last big job in a capitalist dystopia where some people can "serive," or reprogram objects so that they no longer obey the laws of physics. ATTENTION: Dispatches From a Land of Distraction, by Joshua Cohen. (Random House, $28.) This hefty essay collection showcases Cohen's skill as a verbal prestidigitator on subjects ranging from Barnum and Trump to the Holocaust writer A. G. Adler. HEY, KIDDO: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt With Family Addiction, by Jarrett J. Krosoczka. (Graphix, $24.99; ages 12 and up.) A candid, emotional graphic memoir about life with a heroin-addicted mother and rough but loving grandparents. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Bauer's amazing book examines one of slavery's toxic legacies, using convicted people to make profit, through a dual approach. The first is historical, tracing southern states' exploitation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery and forced labor except as punishment for a crime. Convicts could be legally forced to labor, and a variety of sadistic tortures increased their productivity significantly over free labor. This loophole incentivized the incarceration of large numbers of mostly African American people. Convict labor leasing created much infrastructure in the South, popularized the chain gang, and often led to convicts' deaths. Bauer's second approach details his personal account of the four months in 2014-15 during which he worked as a correctional officer in a Louisiana prison, earning $9 per hour, for the Corrections Corporation of America. Frustrated with the lack of transparency and accountability in the for-profit prison industry, Bauer went undercover in hope of obtaining accurate information. Bauer also examines his own motivations, ethics, and behavior during this period and does not spare himself. In short, he observes an acutely dangerous and out-of-control environment created by CCA's profit-driven underpaying of staff and understaffing of prisons. Bauer's historical and journalistic work should be required reading.--Emily Dziuban Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Deprivation, abuse, and fear oppress inmates and guards alike in this hard-hitting exposé of the for-profit prison industry. Mother Jones reporter Bauer, who wrote about being imprisoned in Iran for two years in A Sliver of Light, hired on as a guard in 2014 at Louisiana's Winn Correctional Center, a private prison run by Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic). Equipped with a hidden camera and recorder, he found a snake pit of exploited labor and substandard correctional services. Bauer and his fellow guards were understaffed (sometimes three guards for a 352-prisoner unit), paid $9 an hour, poorly trained, and afraid of inmates; prison management veered between chaotic laxness and brutal crackdowns. With a $34-per-day-per-inmate budget, the prison axed educational and recreational programs and fatally skimped on health care (one inmate Bauer met lost both legs after officials failed to hospitalize him for an infection; another hanged himself after his suicide threats were ignored). Bauer vividly depicts Winn's poisonous culture as he finds himself succumbing to its mind-set of paranoid authoritarianism ("Striving to treat everyone as human takes too much energy. More and more I focus on proving I won't back down"). In addition, he sets his reportage in the context of a history of for-profit incarceration in the South that is rife with racism and torture. The result is a gripping indictment of a bad business. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Bauer (A Sliver of Light) spent four months in 2014 as a corrections officer for a private prison in small-town Louisiana. His real job, though, was as an investigative journalist for Mother Jones. He applied, interviewed, and was hired without a comprehensive background check even though he used his real name. During training and his subsequent work with the prisoners, he found himself getting more brutal and losing sense of his humanity. Alternate chapters cover his time as an officer and the historical evolution of for-profit prisons in the United States. These chapters look back to the English prisoners sent to America as indentured servants, pre-Civil War laws and punishment, the development of penitentiaries, and ultimately the privately run prisons of today. Narrator James Fouhey performs excellently, covering Bauer's emotional range from sympathy to rage. The author's perspective is further informed by the two years he spent as a prisoner in Iran after he wandered too close to their border. VERDICT Those who relish learning about the American prison system, especially private prisons, will appreciate this audiobook. Fans of investigative journalism and embedded explorations in dangerous occupations will find this valuable. ["This informative book will surely find many passionate readers": LJ 10/15/18 review of the Penguin hc.]- Jason L. Steagall, formerly with Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A penetrating expos on the cruelty and mind-bending corruption of privately run prisons across the United States, with a focus on the Winn facility in Louisiana.That prison was operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, but after a shorter version of this book appeared in Mother Jones, the company rebranded as CoreCivic and lost the Winn contract with the government. Bauer (co-author: A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran, 2014), who has won the National Magazine Award in addition to many others, spent four months inside the prison as a corrections officer, carrying out an undercover journalism assignment to find the truth behind CCA's documented record of lies about its practices. At least 8 percent of inmates in state prisons must adjust to the practices of laxly regulated private companies rather than those in government-run facilities. At Winn, correctional officers (a term they prefer to "guard") risk their safety every day for $9 per hour. Bauer determined that the guards, most of them unarmed, were outnumbered by the inmates by a ratio as high as 200 to 1. The author had also viewed prison from a different perspective, having been incarcerated for two years in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison because he had unwittingly crossed a border while hiking as a tourist. Despite the awful conditions in his Iranian cell, Bauer found many of the conditions in Louisiana to be even worse. Nearly every page of this tale contains examples of shocking inhumanity. During his four months at Winn, Bauer also noticed a cruelty streak developing in his own character; even some of the inmates told Bauer that he was changing, and not for the better. Interspersed with the chapters about Winn, Bauer includes historical contexte.g., after the end of the Civil War, states continued slavery by a different name, forcing prisoners to pick cotton and perform other grueling tasks that produced income for prison administrations.A potent, necessary broadside against incarceration in the U.S., which "imprisons a higher portion of its population than any country in the world." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
