Review by Choice Review
Books about US prisons are legion. Many, many scholars and journalists have written about the most famous (Sing Sing, Alcatraz, etc.) and most notorious (Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as "Parchman Farm," located in the Mississippi Delta), which house some of the US's most hardened prisoners. Here, literature professor Cox (Univ. of California, San Diego) captures the nuances of prison life as seen by both insiders and outsiders. The Big House is about the vast, threatening, self-important US prison, the place where men are sent to be isolated, as on a Pacific island. With nine chapters, this small book captures life inside the big house, looking explicitly at the lives of convicts, how they live on a day-to-day basis. Cox does not shy away from some of the more controversial issues in the lives of convicts on the inside, including their sex lives. A serious nine-page "works cited" closes the book, which can be read by advanced high school students and college undergraduates taking courses on deviance or criminology. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduate libraries. E. Smith Wake Forest University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this sociological history of American penology, historian Cox describes the "Big House" era when state and federal prisons were sprawling structures that housed thousands of convicts. Simultaneously fearsome and awe inspiring, these dark behemoths became archetypal in the American imagination, and Cox recreates the world-within-a-world of these institutions by addressing the reader directly, marching him through the prison gates, shaving off his hair, dressing him in striped garb, locking him in a spare cell and noisily regimenting him for work, meals and recreation. Although some large prisons remain today (notably California's San Quentin), the Big House era ended with the closing of Alcatraz and in the face of critiques from the prisoner rights movement of the 1960s. Emphasizing rehabilitation over punishment, prisons became smaller, with "hardened" criminals separated from those guilty of less serious offenses. Although it cites criminology literature extensively, this detailed and vivid historical study is for the nonspecialist and provides a valuable look at the untold stories of life, sexuality, friendship and punishment in an overlooked corner-and microcosm-of American society. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
