In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. A pioneer in criminal justice severity--from assembly-line executions to supermax isolation, from mandatory sentencing to prison privatization--Texas is the most locked-down state in the most incarcerated country in the world.Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, explains how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became a template for the nation. Drawing on the individual stories as well as authoritative research,Texas Tough reveals the true origins of America's prison juggernaut and points toward a more just and humane future.

"Harrowing in their frank detail and desperate tone, the selections in this anthology pack an emotional wallop...Should be required reading for anyone concerned about the violence in our society and the high rate of recidivism."--Publishers Weekly. Includes work by: Jack London, Nelson Algren, Chester Himes,Jack Henry Abbott, Robert Lowell, Malcolm X, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Piri Thomas.

The first published novel from the controversial Nobel Prize winning Russian author of The Gulag Archipelago. In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength.   First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man's will to prevail over relentless dehumanization. Includes an Introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko and an Afterword by Eric Bogosian