The selections cover the life span of imprisonment, from terrifying initiations to deadly routines, inmate hustling, friendships, charged confrontations with family and the world outside, and death row. The selections reveal a universe of unspoken rules, treacherous codes, reversals, and extraordinary breakthroughs. They also reflect the revolution in corrections in recent decades, from the relatively liberal and rehabilitative spirit of the 1970's to the harshly punitive approach that currently prevails. The prison writings are divided into experiential categories that cover coming to terms with expanded and emptied time, deadening routines and ways in which they are ruptured, work, education, games and hustles, race relations, family interactions, recall and evocation of the outside world, ways of getting out of prison, and death row. Notes