San Quentin Inside the Walls
Author: Nancy Ann Nichols
Publisher:
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 63
ISBN-13: 9780963011527
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H-unit
Author: Kent Zimmerman
Publisher:
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 253
ISBN-13: 9781596528550
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The bold account of launching an innovative creative writing class inside San Quentin and the journey of hardship, inspiration, & redemption of its members, from New York Times bestselling authors. San Quentin State Prison would be an unlikely place to look for writing talent. But Keith and Kent Zimmerman, twin brothers and New York Times bestselling co-authors of Operation Family Secrets, have found creative passion, a range of gritty, authentic voices, and a path to hope and redemption behind the guarded walls of the prison's H-Unit—through a creative writing course they founded almost a decade ago. H-Unit: A Story of Writing and Redemption Behind the Walls of San Quentin is the dramatic account of hope and purpose that explores Keith and Kent's experience teaching the class and their students' experience in the Literary Throwdown writing competition. Seen from the inside, H-Unit is written in an authentic voice and tells the story of real-life characters, from the recidivous “Big Bob” to the incorrigible “Midget Porn,” whose lives are transformed by the written word.
Prison Truth
Author: William J. Drummond
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2020-01-07
Total Pages: 339
ISBN-13: 0520298365
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →San Quentin State Prison, California’s oldest prison and the nation’s largest, is notorious for once holding America’s most dangerous prisoners. But in 2008, the Bastille-by-the-Bay became a beacon for rehabilitation through the prisoner-run newspaper the San Quentin News. Prison Truth tells the story of how prisoners, many serving life terms, transformed the prison climate from what Johnny Cash called a living hell to an environment that fostered positive change in inmates’ lives. Award-winning journalist William J. Drummond takes us behind bars, introducing us to Arnulfo García, the visionary prisoner who led the revival of the newspaper. Drummond describes how the San Quentin News, after a twenty-year shutdown, was recalled to life under an enlightened warden and the small group of local retired newspaper veterans serving as advisers, which Drummond joined in 2012. Sharing how officials cautiously and often unwittingly allowed the newspaper to tell the stories of the incarcerated, Prison Truth illustrates the power of prison media to humanize the experiences of people inside penitentiary walls and to forge alliances with social justice networks seeking reform.
Behind San Quentin's Walls
Author: William B. Secrest
Publisher:
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781610352215
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →It's one of the most famous prisons in American history, featured in countless movies and novels. Its inmates have included such diverse characters as Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Eldridge Cleaver, Merle Haggard, and Neal Cassady. It's the one of the oldest continually operating institutions of California state government. San Quentin State Prison is as iconic a symbol of California as the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hollywood sign, yet few people today know the prison's origins or colorful early history. Noted Old West historian William B. Secrest uncovers the forgotten beginnings of San Quentin in "Behind San Quentin's Walls: The History of the Legendary Prison and Its Inmates, 1851-1900." Going back to original source material of public records and contemporary newspaper accounts, Secrest tells of San Quentin's unlikely beginnings as a real estate scheme and its essential role in taming the violent and lawless California of Gold Rush days. "Behind San Quentin's Walls" presents the history of San Quentin as a microcosm of the settlement of California. Planned during the wildest days of Barbary Coast anarchy and Vigilante Committee lynch law in 1850s San Francisco, the state prison at San Quentin was the new state's first attempt to impose the rule of law on a violent frontier society. Featuring numerous citations from contemporary accounts, plus period photos, illustrations, newspaper clippings, and maps, Secrest chronicles the political calculations that created San Quentin; the outsize egos of the men who built it; the mismanagement and frequent escapes that marred San Quentin's early years; and the notorious ruffians and cutthroats who were housed there. Filled with exciting true stories of gunfights, brawls, prison riots, daring escapes, and intrepid manhunts, "Behind San Quentin's Walls" is also a rip-roaring Wild West tale of how men and women with immense talent for both good and evil tamed a new state and each other. "Behind San Quentin's Walls" is a bold mix of serious history and lively writing that no fan of Western history should miss.
The Prisoner in His Palace
Author: Will Bardenwerper
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2017-06-06
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 1501117858
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song, this haunting, insightful, and surprisingly intimate portrait of Saddam Hussein provides “a brief, but powerful, meditation on the meaning of evil and power” (USA TODAY). The “captivating” (Military Times) The Prisoner in His Palace invites us to take a journey with twelve young American soldiers in the summer of 2006. Shortly after being deployed to Iraq, they learn their assignment: guarding Saddam Hussein in the months before his execution. Living alongside, and caring for, their “high value detainee and regularly transporting him to his raucous trial, many of the men begin questioning some of their most basic assumptions—about the judicial process, Saddam’s character, and the morality of modern war. Although the young soldiers’ increasingly intimate conversations with the once-feared dictator never lead them to doubt his responsibility for unspeakable crimes, the men do discover surprising new layers to his psyche that run counter to the media’s portrayal of him. Woven from firsthand accounts provided by many of the American guards, government officials, interrogators, scholars, spies, lawyers, family members, and victims, The Prisoner in His Palace shows two Saddams coexisting in one person: the defiant tyrant who uses torture and murder as tools, and a shrewd but contemplative prisoner who exhibits surprising affection, dignity, and courage in the face of looming death. In this thought-provoking narrative, Saddam, known as the “man without a conscience,” gets many of those around him to examine theirs. “A singular study exhibiting both military duty and human compassion” (Kirkus Reviews), The Prisoner in His Palace grants us “a behind-the-scenes look at history that’s nearly impossible to put down…a mesmerizing glimpse into the final moments of a brutal tyrant’s life” (BookPage).
Behind San Quentin's Walls
Author: William B. Secrest
Publisher: Linden Publishing
Published: 2015-03-15
Total Pages: 525
ISBN-13: 161035267X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →San Quentin is one of the most famous prisons in American history, featured in countless movies and novels, yet few know its colorful early history. In Behind San Quentin’s Walls, noted Old West historian William B. Secrest reveals the beginning of San Quentin, from its unlikely start as a real estate scheme to its essential role in taming the lawless California of the Gold Rush era. Featuring numerous citations from contemporary accounts, plus period photos, illustrations, newspaper clippings, and maps, Behind San Quentin’s Walls chronicles the political calculations that created San Quentin; the outsize egos of the men who built it; the mismanagement and frequent escapes that marred San Quentin’s early years; and the notorious ruffians and cutthroats who were housed there. Filled with exciting true stories of gunfights, brawls, prison riots, daring escapes, and intrepid manhunts, Behind San Quentin’s Walls is a rip-roaring Wild West tale of how men and women with immense talent for both good and evil tamed a new state and each other.
H-Unit
Author: Keith Zimmerman
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
Published: 2012-07-19
Total Pages: 237
ISBN-13: 1618588532
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The bold account of launching an innovative creative writing class inside San Quentin and the journey of hardship, inspiration, & redemption of its members, from New York Times bestselling authors. San Quentin State Prison would be an unlikely place to look for writing talent. But Keith and Kent Zimmerman, twin brothers and New York Times bestselling co-authors of Operation Family Secrets, have found creative passion, a range of gritty, authentic voices, and a path to hope and redemption behind the guarded walls of the prison's H-Unit—through a creative writing course they founded almost a decade ago. H-Unit: A Story of Writing and Redemption Behind the Walls of San Quentin is the dramatic account of hope and purpose that explores Keith and Kent's experience teaching the class and their students' experience in the Literary Throwdown writing competition. Seen from the inside, H-Unit is written in an authentic voice and tells the story of real-life characters, from the recidivous "Big Bob" to the incorrigible "Midget Porn," whose lives are transformed by the written word.
The San Quentin Chronicles
Author: Frank Frogge
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Published: 2017-04-17
Total Pages: 250
ISBN-13: 154341530X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The San Quentin Chronicles is a raw, hard look at prison life as a white peckerwood and the countless days in the walls of San Quentin. It talks about heroin addiction and the price one pays behind barsfrom losing a wife to a disease to losing a daughter after getting clean. It tells how a hateful man can come back from all that bitterness and hatefulness and build a normal life, saving others like him. Its a story that will leave the readers spellbound and wanting more.
The Rise and Fall of California’s Radical Prison Movement
Author: Eric Cummins
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1994
Total Pages: 358
ISBN-13: 9780804722322
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This is a history of the California prison movement from 1950 to 1980, focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area's San Quentin State Prison and highlighting the role that prison reading and writing played in the creation of radical inmate ideology in those years. The book begins with the Caryl Chessman years (1948-60) and closes with the trial of the San Quentin Six (1975-76) and the passage of California's Determinate Sentencing Law (1977). This was an extraordinary era in the California prisons, one that saw the emergence of a highly developed radical convict resistance movement inside prison walls. This inmate groundswell was fueled at times by remarkable individual prisoners, at other times by groups like the Black Muslims or the San Quentin chapter of the Black Panther Party. But most often resistance grew from much wider sources and in quiet corners: from dozens of political study groups throughout the prison; from an underground San Quentin newspaper; and from covert attempts to organize a prisoners' union. The book traces the rise and fall of the prisoners' movement, ending with the inevitably bloody confrontation between prisoners and the state and the subsequent prison administration crackdown. The author examines the efforts of prison staff to augment other methods of inmate management by attempting to modify convict ideology by means of "bibliotherapy" and communication control, and describes convict resistance to these attempts as control. He also discusses how Bay Area political activists became intensely involved in San Quentin and how such writings as Chessman's Cell 2455, Cleaver's Soul on Ice, and Jackson's Soledad Brother reached far beyond prison walls to influence opinion, events, and policy.
Disguised as a Poem
Author: Judith Tannenbaum
Publisher: UPNE
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9781555534530
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"Tannenbaum reminds readers not only that men and women behind bars are human, and therefore deserving of our respect and compassion, but that they have much to tell us about our propensity for both barbarism and beauty." -- Booklist
