"Beginning in 1994, the author began recording stories of 50 incarcerated felons--17 of them were still in prison 20 years later. The men discuss what it means to commit a serious crime and be confined. The author identifies circumstances that ruin some prisoners and save others and presents insights for possible improvements in the criminal justice system"--

"Immortalized in blues songs and movies like Cool Hand Luke and The Defiant Ones, Mississippi's infamous Parchman State Penitentiary was, in the pre-civil rights south, synonymous with cruelty. Now, noted historian David Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues songs, and oral history, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s, when Parchman was used to break...

"In 1991, Shaka Senghor was sent to prison for second-degree murder. Today, he is a lecturer at the University of Michigan. In life, it's not how you start that matters. It's how you finish. Shaka Senghor was raised in a middle class neighborhood on Detroit's eastside during the height of the 1980s crack epidemic. An honor roll student and a natural leader, he dreamed of becoming a doctor--but at age 11, his parents' marriage began to unravel and...

"On August 13, 1986 ... Michael Morton went to work at his usual time. By the end of the day, his wife Christine had been savagely bludgeoned to death in the couple's bed--and the Williamson County Sheriff's office in Texas wasted no time in pinning her murder on [him] ... Michael was swiftly sentenced to life in prison for a crime he had not committed ... It would take twenty-five years--and thousands of hours of effort on the part of Michael's lawyers,...