Book cover of Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement

Book description

Media attention for hardcover: Book got rave reviews in the New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. The work that Solitary Watch did to collect the material in this book was profiled in the New Yorker "Talk of the Town" section
Ongoing…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Hell Is a Very Small Place as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The American carceral system is notorious for long, senseless solitary confinement sentences. While this is now public knowledge, we have actually heard very little from the people who have undergone such brutality. Hell Is A Very Small Place aims to give a platform to these people. This book is an invaluable collection of first-person accounts, composed by the people who lived this horror, many of them for unconscionably long periods. In their distinct voices, they articulate myriad ways time in solitary leads to the destruction of the human soul.  

From Amir's list on to understand solitary confinement.

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A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

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