Here are 47 books that 633 Days Inside fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a descendant of William Bradford and Myles Standish, of Pilgrim fame. I was raised in a Massachusetts farmhouse where the commission of James Churchill as a Captain in the militia still hangs, signed by John Hancock. I have lived and breathed this stuff since first opening my eyes. My wife, MaryLu, is a retired elementary teacher who helps bring life to the young characters. Together, through the medium of novels they would actually enjoy reading, we seek to inspire American youth with the principles of our founding, so that they may be more effective in preserving and defending them.
Many an idealistic young law student like me felt that jolt in our spine early on when we saw up in the balcony of that courthouse a sleepy Scout being told, “Stand up, Jean Louise. Your father’s passin’.”
The movie is as faithful to the novel as the medium would allow. The novel is told entirely from Scout’s POV and not only focuses upon the racism of the time and place, but also upon her coming of age as a tomboy and being told to act “As a little girl should.”
The book offers more to those of us for whom the rule of law and not of men is a passion, especially in Finch’s closing: “There is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of Rockefeller, a stupid man the equal of Einstein… That institution, gentlemen, is a court.”
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'
Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I have a passion for people who do whatever it takes to improve themselves and their circumstances under the worst of conditions. I grew up very poor in north Texas country towns and knew I’d be a successful writer while in the second grade, only hardly anyone encouraged me. The most inspiring movie I saw growing up was To Kill A Mockingbird and it got me orientated toward helping people find justice. I was only in jail once, overnight on a driving while intoxicated charge, and that was enough. I saw the error of my ways, and I appreciate other writers who not only do the same but inspire others to improve no matter what.
Author Wes Moore wrote the Foreword to this book he called “a philosophy that we should all take to heart” and suggested we “honor the redemptive possibilities inherent in every person.” This was reminiscent to me of Greg Lindberg’s interaction with convicted cocaine dealer Willie Colon who, like Chris Wilson, grew in in a very rough neighborhood.
Wilson’s crime was even more serious, as he killed a man at age 17. His plea of self-defense didn’t work; he was sentenced to life in prison. Not giving up, he came up with a list of things he wanted to do – his Master Plan – and 16 years later, he was triumphant. It’s a memoir that can inspire anyone to accomplish greater things.
"The Master Plan is less of a road map and more of a philosophy that we should all take to heart: We are all better than our worst decision, our sense of justice should honor the redemptive possibilities inherent in every person, and our destinies are truly intertwined."--Wes Moore, author of The Other Wes Moore
Growing up in Washington, DC, Chris Wilson was surrounded by violence and despair. He watched his family and neighborhood shattered by trauma, and he lost his faith. One night when he was seventeen, defending himself, he killed a man. He was sentenced to life in…
I have a passion for people who do whatever it takes to improve themselves and their circumstances under the worst of conditions. I grew up very poor in north Texas country towns and knew I’d be a successful writer while in the second grade, only hardly anyone encouraged me. The most inspiring movie I saw growing up was To Kill A Mockingbird and it got me orientated toward helping people find justice. I was only in jail once, overnight on a driving while intoxicated charge, and that was enough. I saw the error of my ways, and I appreciate other writers who not only do the same but inspire others to improve no matter what.
Most people don’t realize that modern federal criminal laws are often so broad and vague that prosecutors can find a way to convict just about anyone if given enough time. Once indicted, all too often, both defense attorneys and prosecutors will look for a plea deal in doing their jobs. The situation has worsened in recent decades, and most indictees simply don’t have the financial wherewithal to fight the accusation. Silvergate explains how much the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance and makes very convincing arguments about how things must change.
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I have a passion for people who do whatever it takes to improve themselves and their circumstances under the worst of conditions. I grew up very poor in north Texas country towns and knew I’d be a successful writer while in the second grade, only hardly anyone encouraged me. The most inspiring movie I saw growing up was To Kill A Mockingbird and it got me orientated toward helping people find justice. I was only in jail once, overnight on a driving while intoxicated charge, and that was enough. I saw the error of my ways, and I appreciate other writers who not only do the same but inspire others to improve no matter what.
This is a horror novel about waking up in a hospital with no memory of who you are. What makes it unique is that Ingman started writing as a prisoner. “With nothing but pen, paper, and my own mind and memory of inspiration from my favorite books by Stephen King to my favorite episodes of Twilight Zone,” he says. His incarceration “spanned over 3 prisons and over the course of 5 years 1 month and 5 days,” he says on his Amazon page. I admire his determination and ambition.
The scariest thing about waking up in a place you've never been is, not that fact that it's a hospital. It's that you can't recognize that it's a hospital, even worse you don't know who you are. It can by far, fill your body with complete unadulterated terror and fill your mind with ludicrous ideas that can be so outrageous that you could lose your mind before you even find it...
I have been captivated by the study of prisons since my early college years. The fact that prisons are so new in human history still feels mind-blowing to me. I used to think that prisons have just always been around, but when you realize they are actually new, that has major implications. This is nowhere more clear than at the beginning: how hard it was to get to the point where prisons made sense to people, to agree on how prisons should be designed and managed, and to keep on the same path when prisons very quickly started to fail. It’s still puzzling to me.
Prisons were originally built for men (really, white men), not for women. But women were sent to prison, just not in big enough numbers to merit their own facilities until much later. Women were also viewed as a difficult population by reformers and prison administrators alike: Women who committed crimes were deemed so morally repugnant that they could not be rehabilitated, so the routines and purposes of prisons seemed not to apply to them (prisons were originally supposed to rehabilitate their prisoners).
As a small and unprofitable population (because they were assigned unprofitable labor like sewing and laundry), women prisoners were considered especially burdensome. Using the prison histories of three differently situated states, Rafter describes the experiences of incarcerated women and how those experiences were shaped by their unique position and the biases about women criminals.
Contemporary Research on crime, prisons, and social control has largely ignored women. Partial Justice, the only full-scale study of the origins and development of women's prisons in the United States, traces their evolution from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It shows that the character of penal treatment was involved in the very definition of womanhood for incarcerated women, a definition that varied by race and social class.Rafter traces the evolution of women's prisons, showing that it followed two markedly different models. Custodial institutions for women literally grew out of men's penitentiaries, starting from a separate room for…
At age eighteen, as a part-time employee of a prisoners’ rights group, I visited an archipelago of decrepit prisons, all relics of an earlier age. My job was gathering inmates’ accounts of bucket toilets, unheated cells, bugs, molds, and rats. Soon after, I began reading and writing about prison reform and its history. And in the many decades since, whether practicing or teaching criminal law, I never lost sight of prisons and their problems. Several of these five books fed my young fascination with prison reform. All of them still challenge me to imagine true and enduring reform.
Tracking the movement for prison reform to American shores, McLennan documents the grim consequences of grafting incarceration with capitalism.
In her telling, the North’s contract labor system took root amid the new industries of Jacksonian America and flourished in the Gilded Age alongside the South’s proto-plantation convict lease camps. Vast penal industrial plants in almost every state proved how foolhardy early reformers had been to think a state enterprise could long abide by its reforming ideals.
America's prison-based system of punishment has not always enjoyed the widespread political and moral legitimacy it has today. In this groundbreaking reinterpretation of penal history, Rebecca McLennan covers the periods of deep instability, popular protest, and political crisis that characterized early American prisons. She details the debates surrounding prison reform, including the limits of state power, the influence of market forces, the role of unfree labor, and the 'just deserts' of wrongdoers. McLennan also explores the system that existed between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, where private companies relied on prisoners for labor. Finally, she discusses the…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I’m an Irish writer who is completely hooked on anything sci-fi related. I used to race home from school to do my homework as fast as possible so I could watch Star Trek: The Next Generation. The first character I ever wrote about began his life in my head as part of the Star Trek: TNG world before deciding he was too big and created his own. It’s still an area I am passionate about. Shows like Firefly, Dark Matter, Picard, etc are on my favourites list. I just love the endless possibilities with the genre. Endless exploration, hi or low tech, and incredible ships. What’s not to love?
Reading this book was a no-brainer for me. First – it has Maul in it. Actually, that’s enough of a reason. Who doesn’t love Maul?
As far as I’m concerned he’s the ultimate bad guy. You don’t mess with him, he kicks serious ass, and he looks wow! My kind of hero/anti-hero. Dark, brooding, commanding, and can stop a conversation with just one look.
He’s the type of anti-hero you can’t help but root for and this book didn’t let me (or Maul) down. Imprisoned in hell, he has to complete his mission while staying alive against seemingly insurmountable odds. Plenty of deep stares, lots of kicking-ass, and a great plot that kept me up early into the morning.
From the mind of Joe Schreiber, New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Death Troopers, comes the delirious follow-up to last year's Darth Plagueis. In a tale of retribution and survival set before the events of The Phantom Menace, Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious dispatch Sith apprentice Darth Maul on a secret mission to infiltrate a criminal empire operating from inside Cog Hive Seven--a hidden prison teeming with the galaxy's most savage criminals. There, he must contend against the scummiest and most villainous in gladiatorial death matches while carrying out his masters' clandestine commands. Failure is not an option;…
Apocalyptic novels have always been a favorite genre of mine. It’s interesting seeing the lengths that people will go through to survive when all factors are stacked against them. The list of novels below is some of the many great reads that opened my eyes to this genre. The characters in these novels are oftentimes faced with challenges that seem impossible to the reader but are left feeling so fulfilled after seeing a character complete the difficult tasks. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
Although this novel is not necessarily ‘apocalyptic,’ I couldn’t help but include it. Alexander Gordon Smith’s Lockdown is a high-stakes novel that follows Alex, a teenager who is wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to an underground prison. The Furnace Penitentiary is not a normal prison, but is a building where inhumane experiments take place. I’ve always been fascinated by characters who have to survive in an environment they cannot physically leave, and the Escape from Furnace series does this beautifully.
Prison Break meets Darren Shan in an unforgettable story of terror, evil and intrigue. Alexander Gordon Smith's cult teen series has been reissued with the bestselling US covers.
Beneath heaven is hell. Beneath hell is Furnace.
When thirteen-year-old Alex is framed for murder, his life changes forever. Now he is an inmate in the Furnace Penitentiary - the toughest prison in the world for young offenders. A vast building sunk deep into the ground, there's one way in and no way out.
But rowdy inmates and sadistic guards are the least of Alex's problems. Every night an inmate is taken…
I have been involved with teaching in prison for the last 22 years, and have taught everything from creative writing to meditation to college classes across carceral facilities in New York, California, and Massachusetts. As the founder and director of the Emerson Prison Initiative at Emerson College’s campus at Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord, I constantly work with faculty and students who are navigating the teaching and learning environment under some of the most adverse circumstances. These books have helped me feel less alone in this work.
I could not stop reading this book once I started, and I stayed up late into the night glued to its pages. Bauer, a journalist, takes us inside the prison where he got a job as a correctional officer. Through engrossing prose that pairs his daily experiences with carefully researched historical context about incarceration in the United States, Bauer shows what prisons represent in real time.
An enraging, necessary look at the private prison system, and a convincing clarion call for prison reform.” —NPR.org
New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018 * One of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2018 * Winner of the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize * Winner of the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism * Winner of the 2019 RFK Book and Journalism Award * A New York Times Notable Book
A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course…
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
I am always drawn to these remarkable books because they illuminate the intricacies of the human experience and the power of resilience. Sparrow in the Razor Wire captivates you with its message of hope and redemption, demonstrating that the human spirit can thrive even in adversity. The Power Elite challenges you to critically examine societal structures, igniting your passion for social justice and change. The 33 Strategies of War empowers you with strategic insights to navigate life's challenges and turn obstacles into opportunities. The Color Purple celebrates love and self-discovery, while Becoming Ms. Burton inspires you with stories of overcoming adversity and personal growth.
For me, this is a powerful memoir that chronicles her remarkable journey from a life marked by trauma and incarceration to one of empowerment and activism. After experiencing profound loss and systemic injustices, Susan transforms her pain into purpose, advocating for the rights of women affected by the criminal justice system.
Through resilience and determination, she not only rebuilds her own life but also inspires countless others to break free from cycles of despair. This inspirational narrative highlights the strength of the human spirit and the transformative power of hope, reminding us that change is possible, even in the face of adversity.
One woman's remarkable odyssey from tragedy to prison to recovery'and recognition as a leading figure in the national justice reform movement. Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van on their street in South Los Angeles. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine, then crack. As a resident of South L.A., an impoverished black community under siege by the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for fifteen years;…
