100 Books Like Laboratories of Virtue

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.

One thing prisons purposely do not do is teach you anything about the history of prisons. If you want to do that, you’ll have to do it on your own—and Oshinsky is such a great start. His 1996 book details the roots of Parchman prison in Mississippi and draws a line from slavery to convict leasing to modern-day penal farms.

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.

Unlike my other recommendations, this book takes a longer historical view of the prison and also provides a more sociological framework for understanding trends in penal history, focusing on the prison but also its sister punishments like parole and probation. Breaking the Pendulum focuses on the full history of the prison in the United States, from its origins to now. But more importantly, it synthesizes the state-of-the-art knowledge from punishment studies about how to think about and understand punishment: points like recognizing geographical variation rather than focusing on the national picture and recognizing that even periods that seem to be fairly homogenous in their penal policies are actually periods with a lot of hidden debate.

From there, it moves away from the standard narrative of a pendulum swinging between punitive and rehabilitative or liberal and conservative approaches to punishment to a more accurate and mixed picture, and for thinking about… show more.

Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. That’s the legend, which did not appear until her grandchildren started to capitalize on tourism to the Philadelphia Centennial celebrations in 1876. The real Betsy Ross proves far more exciting. She sewed flags, but she was also an artisan, a businesswoman, a Quaker who was too political for her Meeting, and involved in the public protests leading up to the Revolution. Miller connects family networks, the material culture of the drapery and textile industries, British trade policies, and Revolutionary politics and protest into a whole cloth. This is a visceral look at the War for Independence from one of its epicenters and the vantage of one of its most iconic women.

The story is like the book, Valley Forge, but in the British point of view of a soldier under General Sir William Howe. The British took over Philadelphia, spending a lavish winter there, whilst the American army freezes in Valley Forge. There are rebels and loyalists everywhere, but who is who? Well placed on the list because of attention to detail.

I love to find “hidden gems” in history. Ona Judge is a gem. First published in 2017, Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge is a biography that reads like an engaging novel. It depicts the life of George and Martha Washington’s young enslaved girl that grows to a young woman in the shadows of the most powerful couple in our new nation. At age 16, Ona leaves Mount Vernon to accompany President Washington and Martha while they live in New York and then Philadelphia. She is treated splendidly, but she is still property. This terrible truth crashes upon Ona when Martha, wanting to give the absolute best gift she can to her difficult, disagreeable, and stubborn granddaughter, decides to give her Ona – her most cherished possession, as a wedding gift. Rather than be property to be gifted and given, Ona escapes. This book shows how President… show more.

This story concerns a family from the Revolutionary period, going to a re-enactment ball of the Mischianza. This was originally a party given by the British troops in Philadelphia for General Howe. It turns out this family, the Nelsons, are navigating through the modern day, as though they really were from the 18th century (and are playfully shocked at the modern conveniences), but are themselves re-enactors. The narrative has the quirk of being written in the style of the period. Good book, because it is like Back to the Future, with the Future already in situ.

Classic stories are great, but you know what’s better? Seeing decades-old books retold with diverse characters. In this instance, Anne is a Black teenager in modern-day Philly dealing with everything from robotics clubs to making new friends. My Abuela was born and raised in Mexico, so I grew up seeing a lot of racism toward her and myself.

I wish she were alive today so I could show her how many books are being written about diverse people by diverse people.  

Washington, our first president…Mr. American Freedom himself—was not just a slave owner but a slave hunter. What was his problem, I wondered, as I read about how he and his wife positively obsessed over re-capturing Ona Judge, a woman who escaped from their bondage.

They spent years, money, and some political clout tracking her down and trying to drag her back. They had plenty of other enslaved people! They weren’t short of money! As I read this wild tale of courage and cruelty, I got the message…the Washingtons knew that if a slave could flee the President of the United States, it would demonstrate the hypocrisy of trying to found a nation on liberty that, uh,…..held men, women and children in bondage.

My spoiler for you: They failed. Judge never returned to the Washingtons and lived to tell her own tale about the ugly history of American freedoms. Dunbar’s book… show more.