Bombay Leather, Incorporated a Business Simulation

Book Description

At last--the definitive one-stop guide for anyone who wants to know what mediation is and how it works. The Mediation Field Guide is a comprehensive primer that is filled with practical strategies for elevating conflict resolution to a process that can effectively resolve business, personal, community, and institutional disputes on multiple levels. Throughout the book, expert mediator Barbara Ashley Phillips provides insights into both the simplicity and complexity of the inner workings of mediation that will enable you to use the process with the skill and finesse of a professional mediator.

Book Description

"Essential reading for anyone treating or suffering from arthritis"-- Dr. Stephen Davies, Editor, Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine

Customer Reviews:

Specific help to evaluate food allergy's role in arthritis.......2001-03-27

Dr. Mansfield, a British allergy specialist, guides the reader to carefully and scientifically test for food allergies and their effect upon rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. He explains clearly each step to be taken and how to evaluate food allergy reactions. With this book, I have been able to understand how food allergies were causing serious arthritis symptoms and then take action to reduce pain and other symptoms.

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Arthritis: The Allergy Connection
John Mansfield
Manufacturer: Thorsons Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NXU194

Book Description

Almost thirty years after the Apollo missions, "Tranquillity Base", "Hadley Rille", or "Taurus-Littrow" are names still resonant with the enormous achievements represented by the lunar landings. But how did these places get their names? Who named Copernicus crater? Where did all those names on lunar maps come from, and what stimulated their selection? Ewen Whitaker traces the origins and evolution of the present-day systems for naming lunar features such as craters, mountains, valleys and dark spots. The connections between the prehistoric and historic names, and today's gazetteer are clearly described. Beautiful lunar maps spanning four centuries of progress wonderfully illustrate the unfolding of our ability to map the Moon. Rare, early photographs add to the sense of history. Comprehensive appendices and the bibliography make this delightful book a work of lasting reference and scholarship.

Customer Reviews:

Science writing at its finest.......2005-10-01

Ewen Whitaker has a gift for reading the lunar surface, and an equal one for writing that conveys not only the facts about the moon and the history of human interest in it, but also a true teacher's delight in sharing his knowledge and enthuiasm. This book will entertain and inform the layman as well as the expert.

Book Description

Chemical Hardness is one of the highly useful concepts which enable chemists to understand reactivities without reference to large supercomputers and databases. Originally developed as an intuitive, qualitative concept, it is today firmly based on and justifed by quantum chemistry.

This book explains the history, applications and theoretical foundations of "chemical hardness". Written by R. G. Pearson, the originator of the concept, it is a clear and well-written account of the consequences that can be derived from "hardness". It also shows the links to quantum chemistry and especially density functional theory which have provided a theoretical basis for and at the same time have extended the range of applications of "chemical hardness".

An excellent and highly readable source of information for every chemist!

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Brilliantly beautiful

The bridge of san luis rey

Why do bad things happen?

"Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan."

Elegant but ultimately unsatifying

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Perennial Classics)
Thornton Wilder
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0060088877
Release Date: 2003-04-15

Book Description

This beautiful new edition features unpublished notes for the novel and other illuminating documentary material, all of which is included in a new Afterword by Tappan Wilder.

"On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below." With this celebrated sentence Thornton Wilder begins The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the towering achievements in American fiction and a novel read throughout the world.

By chance, a monk witnesses the tragedy. Brother Juniper then embarks on a quest to prove that it was divine intervention rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who perished in the tragedy. His search leads to his own death -- and to the author's timeless investigation into the nature of love and the meaning of the human condition.

This new edition of Wilder's 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel contains a new foreword by Russell Banks.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliantly beautiful .......2007-07-25

Thornton Wilder's 1927 masterpiece is a contemplative and delicately mournful work, brilliant in the simple power of its prose. Battling with God, fate, or destiny- particularly the God of the Catholic faith - is a facet that has preoccupied many authors, including Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, and Wilder brings his own unique vision to that individual struggle, viewing it with a mixture of bitterness and faith. He approaches it through the lens of a very human but very haunting question: Why did those people - those people in particular - die? So often throughout the novel it seems that someone else should have died - the close friend or relative or mentor of one of those who fell to their deaths, rather than one of the actual victims. Each of them - a brilliantly intellectual but half-mad matriarch, an intelligent, lonely orphan with a future, a sailor with nothing left to live for, and a old, multi-talented man with the crippled son of a great actress in tow - has reached some sort of turning point in their lives, and is going to make a new beginning. Why then should they die? The book does not provide an answer - not in that way. Rather, Wilder's answer to death, and perhaps in a way to the sacrifices exacted by death or God or whatever he considers the dominant force - is love. "Love...the only meaning."

The characters are brilliantly drawn and sketched, particularly The Marquesa de Montemayor, a woman risen from peasant stock to become a noblewoman, but whose life is wasted in hungry, desperate longings for a daughter who despises her. From this hunger springs a series of brilliantly witty and profound letters which will be the wonder of every generation after her, while in between the writing of them the Marquesa plunges into drunkenness with the regularity of clockwork. Uncle Pio, similarly, a man born with a knack for life and success and the even rarer knack of loving beauty and talent without hungering for the woman who possesses them, is a character who burns with originality and pathos. These two, along with Esteban, the twin who is inwardly dead, are the three around whom the book is centered, with the other two, the young Pepita and Jaime, acting as supplements to them; the more obscure pair among the quartet of victims. The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a hauntingly beautiful exploration into the meaning of life and of death, full of tenderness and subtle ironies, and reminiscent of both Brideshead Revisited and The Bridges of Madison County in its gentle pathos. Not a book to be missed.

The bridge of san luis rey.......2007-07-14

When I began this book I thought it was going to be fairly interesting. Brother Juniper wanted to show the world than everything happens for a reason by studying five people's lives and trying to prove why they fell of of the bridge of san luis rey and died. However as I so painfully read on about these five people's lives I too wished I had fallen off of a bridge. Wilder's writing style is the kind where you have to read the sentences over and over because they are 1) so incredibly boring and 2)so incredible hard to understand. I hoped as I read on that there would be some kind of powerful ending that was all worth reading for since the original purpose of the book seemed deep and intriguing. However, I was left with another boring ten pages and paragraph about love to smooth over the rest of the book. Save yourself and read something else!

Why do bad things happen?.......2007-04-29

Set in a mythical, post-medieval Peru, Wilder's novella is one of the simplest, least presumptive stories ever told. It attempts to address the time-worn dilemma: Why do bad things happen to good (or, perhaps, not so good) people? Five travelers plunge to their deaths in a tragic accident, and a local Franciscan, Brother Juniper, seeks to use rationally based methods to resolve this unanswerable question.

At the outset, Wilder makes clear that the good brother's investigation is misguided, and his conclusions are ridiculous. "He thought he saw in the same accident, the wicked visited by destruction and the good called early to heaven." Nevertheless, we are treated to a trilogy of stories examining the lives of the five victims and those who love them.

Each of three stories differs in its portrait of the characters, but all are epigrammatic in style and elegant in tone. My favorite of the three is the first, about the mortifyingly ugly and emotionally distant Marquessa de Montemayor (modeled after the historical Madame de Sevigne, a famous writer), who sends beautiful letters to a daughter who has fled the nest and who will never return a mother's love. A young helper, Pepita, is an orphan placed with the Marquessa to acquire "worldly experience"; she feels abandoned by the abbess who raised her and longs "for the dear presence, the only real thing in her life." Both the Marquessa and her helper are so preoccupied with what they don't have that they recognize all too late the joy of each other's presence.

Readers who think Wilder is going to help us discover the solution to the randomness of deaths are trying to find depth in the shallow waters under a collapsed bridge. The "point" is as simple (and, in some ways, as frustrating) as the book itself: "It seemed to be sufficient for Heaven that for a while in Peru a disinterested love had flowered and faded." That is, instead of focusing on the reasons for their deaths, Wilder celebrates their lives--and especially the love that each of the five experienced, however briefly, while they were on earth.

"Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.".......2007-04-19

Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning novel takes on the daunting task of exploring whether or not there is a plan behind why we live and die - and how. The debate rages around the incident of the Bridge of San Luis Rey snapping one day, sending five people plummeting to their deaths. Brother Juniper, a Franciscan missionary, witnesses the tragedy and determines to make it the test case in an experiment he has long sought to complete: to prove that the victims were either impious and therefore punished or pious and therefore being whisked away to Heaven to stand beside God. It is a radical study in his time, and its inherent questioning into the nature of the world will ultimately see Brother Juniper mislabeled as a heretic by the church.

The character studies that make up the bulk of the novel (which is really more of a novella given its brevity) are uniformly intriguing, and it is there that "Bridge" truly shines, in addition to Wilder's superb use of language. His portrait of the Marquesa, her servant Pepita, Esteban and his twin brother Manuel, and the Perichole are awe-inspiring glimpses into lives that feel full and true to life - an even greater achievement considering the short amount of time Wilder spends on each of them in order to move the plot forward. If it is more difficult to get a handle on other characters like the Archbishop, the viceroy, Jaime, and the enigmatic Uncle Pio we can forgive Wilder because they still fit the larger scheme of the novel and add to its compelling plot. What emerges from their intertwining lives is the realization that human lives are often too complex to be accurately affixed with such extreme labels as `good' or `bad'. Each has marks for them and against them, making an experiment like Brother Juniper's impossible to complete. There are too many shades of grey to see things as black and white as the missionary would like them to be.

In addition to this main theme, Wilder expertly weaves in questions regarding love, family, and faith. And while I greatly appreciate his refusal to come to any definite answer, one does wish that Wilder had put more into his presentation. In his exploration of this tragic event and its implications he does little more than present evidence for the reader to interpret as they see fit, and the problem there is that they will come away with whatever preconceived notions they may have had regarding the subject perfectly intact. Wilder brings no new insights to the central question and he makes no poignant arguments for either side. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" is, then, essentially a test case for the reader to apply their own theories to. There will be no earth-shattering revelations to make them reconsider their position, and as good as the novel is in all other respects, I wish that the debate as Wilder presented it had more meat. It certainly isn't lacking in substance, but just a touch more flavor would have been greatly appreciated.

Still, I would highly recommend this book to any lover of literature and anyone who is trying to find their own answers to the question it poses. Wilder's novel takes on additional significance in the wake of 9/11 that makes it even more relevant to modern readers. To read that "The bridge seemed to be among the things that last forever; it was unthinkable that it should break" is to revisit the stunned disbelief that has permeated the years since that tragedy.
Grade: B+

Elegant but ultimately unsatifying.......2007-04-08

Bridge of San Luis Rey is a most elegantly written short novel, completed before the author was thirty but imbued with a surfeit of word pictures indicative of artistic maturity. Having said that, the characterization is to me nonsensical. All of us know a someone whose objects are difficult to fathom or who lives on the cusp of reality; but in this story we're introduced to a half dozen such, lives that supposedly interact with one another and whose self-understanding is all too suddenly transformed before or after the tragedy. That "love" is the only human survival may satisfy during sunlit hours, but it is cold comfort in the midnight of the soul.

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder
Manufacturer: The Washington Square Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000B6TF6I

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder
Manufacturer: Washington Square Press Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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The Bridge of San Luis Rey

ASIN: B000I1TPA2

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Manufacturer: Albert & Charles Boni
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000E8OTMS

Product Description

His second book and break through novel.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Time Reading Program Special Edition, Time Reading Program Special Edition)

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Time Reading Program Special Edition, Time Reading Program Special Edition)
Thornton Wilder
Manufacturer: Time, Inc. Book Division
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000EAEFIE

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The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000BD9P16

4 Titles By Wilder - Theophilus North - The Ides of March - Eighth Day - Bridge of San Luis Rey

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4 Titles By Wilder - Theophilus North - The Ides of March - Eighth Day - Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thorton Wilder
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000RFPS96

Product Description

Multiple books shipped as one item for your convenience. Save on Shipping/Handling charges.

Best-in-Books ,18. "The Treasure of Pleasant Valley", "The Best of H.T. Webster" (cartoon feature), "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", "Think Fast, Mr. Moto", "Hawaii" (photo feature), "H.R.H. The Story of Philip, Duke fo Edinburgh", "The Answer", "Sea Fights and Shipwrecks" (excerpt)

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Best-in-Books ,18. "The Treasure of Pleasant Valley", "The Best of H.T. Webster" (cartoon feature), "The Bridge of San Luis Rey", "Think Fast, Mr. Moto", "Hawaii" (photo feature), "H.R.H. The Story of Philip, Duke fo Edinburgh", "The Answer", "Sea Fights and Shipwrecks" (excerpt)
Frank; H.T. Webster; Thornton Wilder; John P. Marquand; Richard Joseph; James Hilton; Philip Wylie; Hanson W. Baldwin Yerby
Manufacturer: Nelson Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000QCYGQ6

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The Bridge at San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder
Manufacturer: Pocket Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000L2H01E

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THE BRIDGE OD SAN LUIS REY
THORNTON WILDER
Manufacturer: PENGUIN
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000S4N0KA

Customer Reviews:

Intensely practical workbook for when things are going downhill.......2006-10-09

If small business bankruptcy is on your mind, you may be experiencing a few sleepless nights. Rather than reaching for the sleeping pills, stay up with this clear, brief and sympathetic introduction to bankruptcy laws and how they function. The authors, attorneys Wes and Wendell Schollander, walk the small-business owner through a typical bankruptcy, pointing out the traps to avoid. You do not need to read it from cover to cover since most chapters stand alone. Although that results in some repetition, we recommend this book both to small business owners in a financial jam or those who are worried they might be, and to anyone who wants to understand bankruptcy basics without paying for a single billable hour of attorney time.

Customer Reviews:

A solid, comprehensive, and superbly presented bibliography.......2002-06-04

William F. Buckley Jr.: A Bibliography is quite simply a very solid, comprehensive, and superbly presented bibliography of political commentator and social conservative William F. Buckley Jr.'s considerable and extensive body of work, including his articles in various magazines, the National Review, fiction and nonfiction books, reviews of movies, music, and theater, obituaries, essays in books, syndicated newspaper columns, and more. Enhanced with an erudite introduction by William F. Meehan III, William F. Buckley Jr.: A Bibliography is especially recommended for college and public libraries collections, as well as the non-specialist general reader hoping to track down a some particular gem of Buckley's political wisdom.

Book Description

A collection of factual stories about several illustrious members of the Lamar family including two justices of the United States Supreme Court, a President of Texas, a steamboat pioneer who went on to become a wealthy New York banker and later a Civil War blockade-runner and his firebrand, slave blockade running son.

Customer Reviews:

A Unique view of a civil war family.......2000-10-15

This is a story and history of a family covering the period prior to and after the Civil war. I found it to be a unique and factual story illustrationg the economic and business impact that the civil war imposed on families and leaders of our country during the period of civil strife. Life has a way of going on despite the happenings around us. This story shows the successes and the trials of various members of the Lamar family and the impact of their decisions on the history of our nation. There are heroes, and villans, statesmen and politicians all according to your point of view , and the circustances of their action. The stories are unique in their presentation and the book moves rapidly, maintaining your interest throughout the book. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in the workings of our nation in the history of the period.

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Politics and Law Crash head first, and end in disaster

Fortas: The Rise and Ruin of a Supreme Court Justice
Bruce Allen Murphy
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0688053572

Customer Reviews:

Politics and Law Crash head first, and end in disaster.......2002-12-29

Fortas was the ultimate insider, from Roosevelt on. He founded one of Washington's most prestigeous law firms, and became the lawyer for a vast array of clients, ranging from Peurto Rico to many large corporations who wanted something from Uncle Sam.

But his career will forever be defined by his relationship with Lyndon Johnson. More than Johnson's personal lawyer (which he was), he was also Johnson's political confidant.

Not surprisingly, when Johnson had a chance to fill a Supreme Court seat, he gave it to Fortas. Fortas did not want it, and Murphy's description of Johnson's ploy to force Fortas to accept Johnson's "gift" is one of the most telling stories I have ever read about Johnosn.

The problem was, once on the Court, Johnson still treated Fortas as both his personal lawyer and his political advisor. Fortas' relationship with Johnson may have gone un noticed, but Johnson decided to do Fortas a second (unwanted) favor, by appointing him as Chief Justice when Warren retired.

The tragedy of the Senate confirmation hearings form the center of this remarkable book. As a study in the raw workings of politics (presidential, congressional, and on the court itself), it is unsurpassed. Fortas' life was destroyed, and the Court was handed over to Burger, Nixon, and the conservatives. How would the law be different today if only Fortas had been confirmed?

If you can find a copy, snap it up. Such a superb book has no reason to ever be "out of print."

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Still the Definitive Study of Abe Fortas

A very good examination of a controversial figure

Gideon's Champion Finally Gets a Posthumous Fair Hearing

Pitiful, sycophantic.

Abe Fortas: A Biography
Laura Kalman
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0300052588

Customer Reviews:

Still the Definitive Study of Abe Fortas.......2005-12-17

We don't hear much about Abe Fortas (1890-1910) these days--the last time I saw a reference to him was in connection with the allegations of cronyism levied at Harriet Miers during her brief period as an Associate Justice nominee. This judicial biography first appeared in 1990, and it continues to be the definitive analysis of Fortas, his public career, and his private life. The book reflects the typical Laura Kalman thoroughness (there are some 83 pages of invaluable notes), clarity of writing, and cogency of analysis. No other book, monograph, or article can compare with the author's acute and perceptive analysis of this most interesting figure (although Bruce Murphy's somewhat "sensational" biography is a definite contribution). While Fortas' (now) late widow, Carolyn Agger assisted in providing information, this is by no stretch an "authorized biography"--Kalman is plenty critical of Abe at various points.

Fortas had just a fascinating life even before he joined the Supreme Court. The book is organized in three sections, begining with "New Dealer," which covers Fortas student years at Yale Law School, his work with Jerome Frank (another legendary character) at the AAA, his brief stint teaching at YLS, his move to the SEC under Bill Douglas, and his eventual rise as an Under Secretary to Harold Ickes at Interior. All this before he was even 35 or so.

The second section is devoted to Fortas as "Washington Lawyer," of great interest to us D.C. legal types. Here is discussed the formation of Arnold, Fortas, & Porter, its involvement in the early loyalty cases and Congressional investigations of Communist infiltration (?) during the 1950's, and Fortas' masterful argument in Gideon v. Wainwright ensuring the right to counsel in serious federal criminal cases. Kalman interviewed a number of the members of the firm during this period, including Abe Krash, as sources.

The next section focuses on Fortas as a Justice and how he got there and why he resigned. Here Kalman is particularly effective in not only analyzing the unique long-standing relationship between LBJ and Fortas, but in dispelling the still often heard myth that Fortas didn't want the nomination and was forced into it by Johnson. This is one of the strongest sections of the book. There is some interesting discussion of one of Kalman's favorite topics, Yale Legal Realism, and how this might have impacted on the Justice. His continuing role as advisor and even participant in LBJ Vietnam policy is dissected. The financial improprieties that led first to Fortas' withdrawl as a nominee for Chief Justice, and eventually to his resignation from the Court are dealt with in a highly analytical and non-judgmental manner. The involvement with the Nixon administration in forcing Fortas off the Court is also examined, though I must disagree with Kalman that the meeting between the creepy Attorney General John Mitchell and Earl Warren where potential incriminating information was disclosed to the Chief was inappropriate. Finally, Fortas returns to private practice (although not with A&P)and again demonstrates his impressive legal skills.

Another extraordinary contribution by Kalman to the professional literature, of profit to anyone interested in Fortas, YLS, the New Deal, the dynamic 1950's and the Supreme Court under Warren. It is also just an interesting read.

A very good examination of a controversial figure.......2001-05-23

Laura Kalman's biography of Abe Fortas is a fascinating look at the life of one of this country's most controversial judicial figures. Fortas, whose nomination as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was blocked by LBJ's political opponents, emerges from the book as a sympathetic figure, a wise counselor and judge, and, fundamentally, human. Kalman has done her homework, meticulously researching the life and times of Fortas to create what should stand as the definitive work on his life for some time to come.

Gideon's Champion Finally Gets a Posthumous Fair Hearing.......2000-07-13

I do believe the first "reviewer" is a right-wing hack who has never read the book, but just wants to trash it. That review should be deleted.

Justice Fortas is one of the most abused figures in American jurisprudence. Ms. Kalman, using various facts not cited by the first "reviewer" (because the first "reviewer" didn't know them, because he/she hadn't read the book he/she was dissing), particularly Fortas' stellar work in the field of civil rights and for the poor of all races (the Gideon case being a shining example), shows that Justice Fortas was a much better judge, a much better legal scholar, and a much better human being, than the persons that Nixon, Reagan and Bush nominated for the court - many of whom, such as the infamous Judge Carswell, later ended their lives in disgrace utterly eclipsing the politically-engineered humiliation of Justice Fortas.

An engrossing read.

Pitiful, sycophantic........1999-07-28

This book is typical of contemporary judicial biography: the author has selected her left judge, then said "ooh" and "ah" over virtually everything he ever did. Apparently, she made friends with his widow in the process. Truly pitiful.

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Abe Fortas. A Biography
Laura Kalman
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OS8DV6

Amazon.com

Most people know it's easier to get into prison than it is to get out. But for a journalist, just getting into Sing Sing, New York's notorious maximum-security prison, isn't easy. In fact, Ted Conover was so stymied by official channels that he took the only way in--other than crime--and became a New York State corrections officer: "I wanted to hear the voices one truly never hears, the voices of guards--those on the front lines of our prison policies, the society's proxies." Newjack is Conover's account of nearly a year at ground zero of the criminal justice system. What it reveals is a mix of the obvious and the absurd, with hypocrisies not unexpected considering that the land of the free shares with Russia the distinction of having the world's largest prison population. As of December 1999, it was projected that the number of people incarcerated in the United States would reach 2 million in 2000.

This is the world Conover enters when he, along with other new recruits, undergoes seven weeks of pseudomilitary preparation at the Albany Training Academy. Then it's off to Sing Sing for the daily grind of prison life. Conover correctly and vividly captures the essence of that life, its tedium interspersed with the adrenaline rush of an "incident" and the edge of fear that accompanies every action. He also details how the guards experience their own feelings of confinement, often at the hands of the inmates:

A consequence of putting men in cells and controlling their movements is that they can do almost nothing for themselves. For their various needs they are dependent on one person, their gallery officer. Instead of feeling like a big, tough guard, the gallery officer at the end of the day often feels like a waiter serving a hundred tables or like the mother of a nightmarishly large brood of sullen, dangerous, and demanding children. When grown men are infantilized, most don't take to it too nicely.

And not taking to it nicely often involves violence. Indeed, the constant potential for violence on any scale makes even humdrum assignments dangerous. It's astonishing that more doesn't happen, given that the majority of the 1,800 inmates have been convicted of violent felonies: murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, assault, kidnapping, burglary, arson. But beneath the simmering rage rests an unexpected sensitivity that Conover captures brilliantly. After encountering a Hispanic inmate with a tattoo of a heartbreaking passage from The Diary of Anne Frank on his back, he writes: "It was easier to stay incurious as an officer. Under the inmates' surface bluster, their cruelty and selfishness, was almost always something ineffably sad." Ultimately, the emphasis of Conover's work is on the toll prison exacts--most immediately on the jailed and their jailers, but also on a society that puts both there in increasing numbers. --Gwen Bloomsburg

Book Description

Acclaimed journalist Ted Conover sets a new standard for bold, in-depth reporting in this first-hand account of life inside the penal system.

When Conover’s request to shadow a recruit at the New York State Corrections Officer Academy was denied, he decided to apply for a job as a prison officer. So begins his odyssey at Sing Sing, once a model prison but now the state’s most troubled maximum-security facility. The result of his year there is this remarkable look at one of America’s most dangerous prisons, where drugs, gang wars, and sex are rampant, and where the line between violator and violated is often unclear. As sobering as it is suspenseful, Newjack is an indispensable contribution to the urgent debate about our country’s criminal justice system, and a consistently fascinating read.

Customer Reviews:

Nothing New.......2007-07-12

While on the surface, the idea of Conover immersing himself into the NY maximum security prison system as a corrections officer (CO) seemed to be a recipe for an exciting book, Newjack did not live up to its hype. Somewhere in the book it was mentioned that to become a mature CO, 4-5 years of work experience is necessary. Consequently, the one year Conover spent in New York's Sing Sing maximum security prison was hardly enough time to learn and build the kind of relationships necessary for a thoughtful and entertaining book. Instead, the parts of the book I found to be the most interesting were the historical accounts of who had the most influence in how the U.S. and NY prison systems evolved.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of new ground covered through Conover's personal experience during guard training or in Sing Sing. The old clichés of prison guards as mean SOBs and apathetic prisoners beyond rehabilitation were reinforced.

I commend Conover's dedication to compiling material from firsthand experience, but Newjack was mildly entertaining and even less educational in terms of observations of inmate behavior, or new ideas in improving the system. Like most journalist authors, Conover is not much of a story teller, and his book would have had richer content had he been allowed to shadow an experienced CO as he set out to do initally, but was denied.

Conover's Best.......2007-05-21

Chameleon journalist Ted Conover trains as a prison guard and works in Sing Sing, giving readers an intense look into prison life and the dynamics of the guards and guarded.

Intense, intensely personal, and full of insight into the prison system itself.

Best part is his history of the US penitentiary system, which most of us don't study in US History classes! Highly readable, well-researched section that should be of interest to all US citizens.

An incredible journey, a well-written account.

Much Respect.......2005-10-17

I have to give the author credit. When he was denied the right to shadow a C.O. (Corrections Officer), he became one. This is not as simple as it sounds. He literally swore an oath to protect the inmates and the lives of his fellow officers. He worked the job with dedication, and got some great material out of it. I was wary, because I thought he might have been playing C.O. But, working in Sing Sing, you don't "play" anything. Bravo.

A Great Adventure Behind Bars........2005-07-30

Some investigative reporters will do anything for a story. We see it all the time on T.V. news. This one tends to live dangerously; he wrote about American Illegal Aliens in 1987 -- I wish he would do a followup as so much has changed in that regard in the past twenty years or so.

In this book, Ted Conover worked for a yar at the Sing Sing prison (where they held the Rosenbergs back in the '50s) in upstate New York. Next to Alcatraz out in the ocean off California, this possibly is the most dangerous place to encounter hard criminals. Not that I am saying that the Rosenbergs were criminals; perhaps the husband was, but Ethel was not -- and it was a travesty of justice to take her away from her two sons. I've done some research in that case, and I know for a fact that she was not involved, but her brother was. They went to Los Alamos to gather information for the Russians; that made them considered 'spies.' Ethel never would have been capable of that, just as Alger Hiss was not!

We have a local investigative reporter who goes places for background of articles but he goes where he will be simply an unknown and have a good time while he is snooping out the info he needs for a good article. He is good and improving every year. He might some day catch up to Ted Conover.

He takes such risks in his endeavor to keep the public informed of the bad side of life. Those men and women incarcerated, for the most part, committed horendous crimes and will again -- even on the guards if possible. Not all are that way. Some are there because they were framed, like Ethel Rosenberg. He went through prison guard training, though from the prison movies I've seen they aren't particularly smart, just mean.

This book was a touch of Hell as they know it and experience it every day. That's why I am against the death penalty; keeping folks locked up away from the people they love (and hate) is a much worse fate than a quick death.

A great public service..........2005-07-04

Walter Cronkite once said that the citizens of a country have a right to know what's being done in their name. It's a simple enough premise: public institutions, spending public money, should be subject to public scrutiny. And yet, the nation's prisons and jails remain practically invisible to the public eye, thanks to both their media-shy temperament and a relatively incurious media. Newspapers and television may flock to chronicle shocking crimes and sensational trials, but when the sentences have been handed down and the headlines are fading, the public mentality seems to be "out of sight, out of mind."

Journalist Ted Conover sought to redress this problem, to understand the corrections system in New York State and, in particular, the corrections officers who, on behalf of the public, guard those deemed unfit for society. Towards that end, he wanted to follow a rookie C.O. through training and into an initial posting, but was repeatedly denied permission to do so. Rebuffed by the powers-that-be, stymied by the system, he settled on an even better and more original solution: to become that rookie C.O. himself.

Many journalists aspire to be (or pretend to be) completely objective--dispassionate chroniclers of the world, separate from the people and situations they write about. The brilliance of Conover's book is that he took a completely opposite tack, enmeshing himself in the system rather than trying to observe it at arm's length. And in doing so, he has created an excellent, compelling, and thoroughly informative book, one that dismantles many stereotypes about prisons and guards, stripping away the lumpy old layers of paint and showing the true shape and color of things.

Many of his most insightful observations deal with a very poorly understood subject--the effects of incarceration on the guards. At the outset of his experiences, Conover wonders whether guards truly are the brutal people depicted so often in prison movies and, if so, whether they are drawn to the work because they are insensitive, mean people or whether they become that way because of the work. By the end of his time guarding Sing Sing, he seems convinced that the latter is often the case, that warehousing people can end up dehumanizing both the people being warehoused and the people doing the warehousing. The stress and strain of prison, it seems, seeps into the lives of C.O.s, resulting in higher rates of alcoholism and divorce. (Those who pick this book up expecting an overly-sensitive, "Cool Hand Luke"-ish rant about cruel C.O.s and maltreated prisoners will find themselves pleasantly surprised by the author's fairness and empathy towards his fellow guards.)

Prison sex, too, appears far differently on the inside than it does in popular culture. While prison rape is a staple of movies and shows about incarceration ("The Shawshank Redemption", "Oz"), Conover concludes that most prison sex is, in fact, consensual. Such observations may seem like voyeurism, but they are not; given the lower availability of condoms, the higher rates of infection for sexually transmitted diseases (particularly HIV) and the fact that many of these men will eventually leave prison (possibly to rejoin thier families), prison sex is a factor that fundamentally alters the incarceration equation.

Despite its overall excellence and its willingness to take on such edgy topics, the book isn't a completely thorough or representative picture of New York State's corrections system. The author readily admits that Sing Sing is an atypical prison, with a larger percentage of minority guards and unseasoned officers than the upstate facilities; it would have been interesting if he'd been willing or able to spend longer in the system and get a better look at those institutions.

Still, this complaint is insignificant when compared with the book's overall virtues. "Newjack" is a great public service, a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the consequences of the nation's get-tough-on-crime mentality. While many people affect a cavalier don't-do-the-crime-if-you-can't-do-the-time air, Conover's book shows that this is a very myopic attitude--prisoners will do the time, and they will emerge, and the experiences they face on the inside will help determine whether they will do the crime again or instead find a place in society. Given that fact, society should try to better understand what life is like for them--and for the guards who do the public's thankless bidding.

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Library Edition

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Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Library Edition
Ted Conover
Manufacturer: Alfred a Knopf Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KXTK9O

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