|
Search Results:
|
Displaying records 1 through 10 of 4000 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Price: $7.99
|
|
Sale: $2.97
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Dell
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
|
|
Author: John Grisham
|
|
Publisher: Dell
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 345.76602523
|
|
Publication Date: 2007-11-20
|
|
Reading Level: 448
|
|
|
Description: John Grisham tackles nonfiction for the first time with The Innocent Man, a true tale about murder and injustice in a small town (that reads like one of his own bestselling novels). The Innocent Man chronicles the story of Ron Williamson, how he was arrested and charged with a crime he did not commit, how his case was (mis)handled and how an innocent man was sent to death row. Grisham's first work of nonfiction is shocking, disturbing, and enthralling--a must read for fiction and nonfiction fans. We had the opportunity to talk with John Grisham about the case and the book, read his responses below. --Daphne Durham
20 Second Interview: A Few Words with John Grisham
 Q: After almost two decades of writing fiction, what compelled you to write non-fiction, particularly investigative journalism?
A: I was never tempted to write non-fiction, primarily because it's too much work. However, obviously, I love a good legal thriller, and the story of Ron Williamson has all the elements of a great suspenseful story.
Q: Why this case?
A: Ron Williamson and I are about the same age and we both grew up in small towns in the south. We both dreamed of being major league baseball players. Ron had the talent, I did not. When he left a small town in 1971 to pursue his dreams of major league glory, many thought he would be the next Mickey Mantle, the next great one from the state of Oklahoma. The story of Ron ending up on Death Row and almost being executed for a murder he did not commit was simply too good to pass up.
Q: How did you go about your research?
A: I started with his family. Ron is survived by two sisters who took care of him for most of his life. They gave me complete access to the family records, photographs, Ron's mental health records, and so on. There was also a truckload of trial transcripts, depositions, appeals, etc., that took about 18 months to organize and review. Many of the characters in the story are still alive and I traveled to Oklahoma countless times to interview them.
Q: Did your training as a lawyer help you?
A: Very much so. It enabled me to understand the legal issues involved in Ron's trial and his appeals. It also allowed me, as it always does, to be able to speak the language with lawyers and judges.
Q: Throughout your book you mention, The Dreams of Ada: A True Story of Murder, Obsession, and a Small Town. How did you come across that book, and how did it impact your writing The Innocent Man?
A: Several of the people in Oklahoma I met mentioned The Dreams of Ada to me, and I read it early on in the process. It is an astounding book, a great example of true crime writing, and I relied upon it heavily during my research. Robert Mayer, the author, was completely cooperative, and kept meticulous notes from his research 20 years earlier. Many of the same characters are involved in his story and mine.
Q: You take on some pretty controversial and heated topics in your book--the death penalty, prisoner’s rights, DNA analysis, police conduct, and more--were any of your own beliefs challenged by this story and its outcome?
A: None were challenged, but my eyes were open to the world of wrongful convictions. Even as a former criminal defense attorney, I had never spent much time worrying about wrongful convictions. But, unfortunately, they happen all the time in this country, and with increasing frequency.
Q: So many of the key players in this case are either still in office or practicing attorneys. Many family members and friends still live in the same small town. How do you think The Innocent Man will impact this community and other small rural towns as they struggle with the realities of the justice system?
A: Exonerations seem to be happening weekly. And with each one of them, the question is asked--how can an innocent man be convicted and kept in prison for 20 years? My book is the story of only one man, but it is a good example of how things can go terribly wrong with our judicial system. I have no idea how the book will be received in the small town of Ada, Oklahoma, or any other town.
Q: What do you hope your readers will take away from The Innocent Man?
A: A better understanding of how innocent people can be convicted, and a greater concern for the need to reimburse and rehabilitate innocent men after they have been released.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.99
|
|
Sale: $8.37
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Wally Lamb
|
|
Publisher: Harper Perennial
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 810.809287086927
|
|
Publication Date: 2004-02
|
|
Reading Level: 368
|
|
|
|
Description: Any book that can give voice to the voiceless should be celebrated. No one feels this more strongly than Wally Lamb, editor of Couldn't Keep It to Myself, a collection of stories by 11 women imprisoned in the York Correctional Institution in Connecticut. Teacher and novelist Lamb was invited to head a writing workshop at York Correctional Institution in 1999. His somewhat reluctant acceptance soon turned into steadfast advocacy once the women in his charge began to tell their stories. Lamb maintains that there are things we need to know about prison and prisoners: "There are misconceptions to be abandoned, biases to be dropped." However, as heartfelt as his appeal is, nothing speaks more convincingly in this book than the stories themselves. Those collected here are disturbing and horrific. They reveal, often in graphic detail, the worst kind of abuse: incest, drug addiction, spousal violence, parental neglect, or incompetence. They're also testimony to what social workers and health care professionals have confirmed for years--that those who populate our prisons are often victims first themselves. Thus, the telling of these stories serves as a form of therapy. They are also sad accounts of the brutalities many suffer, yet few discuss: "One day I figured out a dying little girl lived inside of me, so I threw her a lifeline in the form of paper and pen." Considering the degradation the contributors have experienced both in and outside prison, the courage, candor, and honesty with which they speak truly make these stories, as difficult as they are to read, "victories against voicelessness--miracles in print." --Silvana Tropea
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.95
|
|
Sale: $7.98
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Vintage
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Michel Foucault
|
|
Publisher: Vintage
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 365.643
|
|
Publication Date: 1995-04-25
|
|
Reading Level: 352
|
|
|
|
Description: In this brilliant work, the most influential philosopher since Sartre suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $19.95
|
|
Sale: $13.82
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Rae John Publishers
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
|
|
Author: Bud Allen::Diana Bosta
|
|
Publisher: Rae John Publishers
|
|
Edition: 1
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 365.643
|
|
Publication Date: 1981-08
|
|
Reading Level: 228
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $15.95
|
|
Sale: $9.63
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Pariyatti Publishing
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Jenny Phillips
|
|
Publisher: Pariyatti Publishing
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 364
|
|
Publication Date: 2008-09-01
|
|
Reading Level: 240
|
|
|
Description: Through intimate letters, interviews, and stories, this narrative reveals the impact that a life-changing retreat had on a group of inmates at the highest level maximum-security state prison in Alabama. The 38 participants in the first-ever intensive, silent 10-day program inside the walls of a corrections facility—many serving life sentences without parole—detail the range of their experiences, the depth of their understanding of the Buddha’s teachings gained by direct experience, and their setbacks and successes. During the Vipassana meditation program, they face the past and their miseries and emerge with a sense of peace and purpose. This compelling story shows the capacity for commitment, self-examination, renewal, and hope within a dismal penal system and a wider culture that demonizes prisoners. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.95
|
|
Sale: $8.33
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: T. J. Parsell
|
|
Publisher: Da Capo Press
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
|
|
Publication Date: 2007-08-30
|
|
Reading Level: 336
|
|
|
|
Description: When seventeen-year-old T. J. Parsell held up the local Photo Mat with a toy gun, he was sentenced to four and a half to fifteen years in prison. The first night of his term, four older inmates drugged Parsell and took turns raping him. When they were through, they flipped a coin to decide who would "own" him. Forced to remain silent about his rape by a convict code among inmates (one in which informers are murdered), Parsell's experience that first night haunted him throughout the rest of his sentence. In an effort to silence the guilt and pain of its victims, the issue of prisoner rape is a story that has not been told. For the first time Parsell, one of America's leading spokespeople for prison reform, shares the story of his coming of age behind bars. He gives voice to countless others who have been exposed to an incarceration system that turns a blind eye to the abuse of the prisoners in its charge. Since life behind bars is so often exploited by television and movie re-enactments, the real story has yet to be told. Fish is the first breakout story to do that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $21.95
|
|
Sale: $11.79
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
|
|
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 323
|
|
Publication Date: 2007-08-01
|
|
Reading Level: 704
|
|
|
|
Description: Volume 1 of the gripping epic masterpiece, Solzhenitsyn's chilling report of his arrest and interrogation, which exposed to the world the vast bureaucracy of secret police that haunted Soviet society
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.95
|
|
Sale: $4.98
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Vintage
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Ted Conover
|
|
Publisher: Vintage
|
|
Edition: Vintage Books Ed
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 365.92
|
|
Publication Date: 2001-06-12
|
|
Reading Level: 352
|
|
|
|
Description: Most people know it's easier to get into prison than it is to get out. But for a journalist, just getting into Sing Sing, New York's notorious maximum-security prison, isn't easy. In fact, Ted Conover was so stymied by official channels that he took the only way in--other than crime--and became a New York State corrections officer: "I wanted to hear the voices one truly never hears, the voices of guards--those on the front lines of our prison policies, the society's proxies." Newjack is Conover's account of nearly a year at ground zero of the criminal justice system. What it reveals is a mix of the obvious and the absurd, with hypocrisies not unexpected considering that the land of the free shares with Russia the distinction of having the world's largest prison population. As of December 1999, it was projected that the number of people incarcerated in the United States would reach 2 million in 2000. This is the world Conover enters when he, along with other new recruits, undergoes seven weeks of pseudomilitary preparation at the Albany Training Academy. Then it's off to Sing Sing for the daily grind of prison life. Conover correctly and vividly captures the essence of that life, its tedium interspersed with the adrenaline rush of an "incident" and the edge of fear that accompanies every action. He also details how the guards experience their own feelings of confinement, often at the hands of the inmates: A consequence of putting men in cells and controlling their movements is that they can do almost nothing for themselves. For their various needs they are dependent on one person, their gallery officer. Instead of feeling like a big, tough guard, the gallery officer at the end of the day often feels like a waiter serving a hundred tables or like the mother of a nightmarishly large brood of sullen, dangerous, and demanding children. When grown men are infantilized, most don't take to it too nicely. And not taking to it nicely often involves violence. Indeed, the constant potential for violence on any scale makes even humdrum assignments dangerous. It's astonishing that more doesn't happen, given that the majority of the 1,800 inmates have been convicted of violent felonies: murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, assault, kidnapping, burglary, arson. But beneath the simmering rage rests an unexpected sensitivity that Conover captures brilliantly. After encountering a Hispanic inmate with a tattoo of a heartbreaking passage from The Diary of Anne Frank on his back, he writes: "It was easier to stay incurious as an officer. Under the inmates' surface bluster, their cruelty and selfishness, was almost always something ineffably sad." Ultimately, the emphasis of Conover's work is on the toll prison exacts--most immediately on the jailed and their jailers, but also on a society that puts both there in increasing numbers. --Gwen Bloomsburg
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $14.95
|
|
Sale: $8.39
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Paperback
|
|
Author: Wally Lamb::I'll Fly Away Contributors
|
|
Publisher: Harper Perennial
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
|
|
Publication Date: 2008-11-01
|
|
Reading Level: 288
|
|
|
|
Description: For several years, Wally Lamb, the author of two of the most beloved novels of our time, has run a writing workshop at the York Correctional Institution, Connecticut's only maximum-security prison for women. Writing, Lamb discovered, was a way for these women to face their fears and failures and begin to imagine better lives. Couldn't Keep It to Myself, a collection of their essays, was published in 2003 to great critical acclaim. With I'll Fly Away, Lamb offers readers a new volume of intimate pieces from the York workshop. Startling, heartbreaking, and inspiring, these stories are as varied as the individuals who wrote them, but each illuminates an important core truth: that a life can be altered through self-awareness and the power of the written word.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Price: $29.95
|
|
Sale: $18.23
|
| |
|
Manufacturer: Abrams
|
|
Number of Items: 1
|
| |
|
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
|
|
Author: Nancy D. Campbell::J.P. Olsen::Luke Walden
|
|
Publisher: Abrams
|
|
Edition: 1st
|
|
Dewey Decimal Number: 365.667290973
|
|
Publication Date: 2008-10-01
|
|
Reading Level: 208
|
|
|
Description: From 1935 until 1975, just about every junkie busted for dope went to the Narcotic Farm. Equal parts federal prison, treatment center, farm, and research laboratory, the Farm was designed to rehabilitate addicts and help researchers discover a cure for drug addiction. Although it began as a bold and ambitious public works project, and became famous as a rehabilitation center frequented by great jazz musicians among others, the Farm was shut down forty years after it opened amid scandal over its drug-testing program, which involved experiments where inmates were being used as human guinea pigs and rewarded with heroin and cocaine for their efforts. Published to coincide with a documentary to be aired on PBS, The Narcotic Farm includes rare and unpublished photographs, film stills, newspaper and magazine clippings, government documents, as well as interviews, writings, and anecdotes from the prisoners, doctors, and guards that trace the Farm’s noble rise and tumultuous fall, revealing the compelling story of what really happened inside the prison walls. The Narcotic Farm is a beautiful, fascinating book that takes readers deep into a forgotten American institution. The pictures are remarkable and the story brings an important moment in history vividly to life. It’s a stunning work. Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps
The story of America’s long and deep affair with addictive drugs is incomplete without mention of the legendary federal narcotic hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. The Narcotic Farm tells this story well, and in addition provides a wealth of revealing photographs and documents that speak volumes on what it was like to be a junkie in the mid-twentieth century. Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Evidence
The Narcotic Farm works its magic by recapturing, in images and words, the lost world of “Narco,” the sprawling federal prison-hospital for drug addicts in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s the details that get you, from the disheveled misery of withdrawal to the uninhibited joy of performing in the house jazz band. David Courtwright, author of Dark Paradise, Addicts Who Survived, and Forces of Habit
Everyone who cares about addiction and recovery in this country should look at these pictures and read this text. Susan Cheever, author of My Name is Bill Wilson: His Life and the Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous and Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction
“The 'Narco,' with its combination of prison and hospital, drug experimentation and drug cure, total institution and farm, exemplified the contradictions of American drug policy. The authors are to be commended for their accessible text and high-quality images that vividly convey the history of the Narcotics Farm from the high hopes of its birth to its evolution into a "fraternity for drug addicts."– Eric Schneider - " Smack: Heroin and the American City," University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Displaying records 1 through 10 of 4000
|
|
|
|
