E-Books →Sentence Ten Years and a Thousand Books in Prison

In 2003 Daniel Genis, the son of a famous Soviet émigré writer, broadcaster, and culture critic, was fresh out of NYU when he faced a serious heroin addiction that led him into debt and ultimately crime. After he was arrested for robbing people at knifepoint, he was nicknamed the "apologetic bandit" in the press, given his habit of expressing his regret to his victims as he took their cash. He was sentenced to twelve years-ten with good behavior, a decade he survived by reading 1,046 books, taking up weightlifting, having philosophical discussions with his fellow inmates, working at a series of prison jobs, and in general observing an existence for which nothing in his life had prepared him.
Genis describes in unsparing and vivid detail the realities of daily life in the New York penal system. In his journey from Rikers Island...