Will review more fully later, but this collection of essays is devastating from beginning to end.

Take your worst imagination of torture, violence, and dehumanisation. Now make it thousand times worst. Those are not the story of people detained by an irregular army or horrific regime. Those are humans forced to decades of solitary confinement by democracy exporter and world leader, USA. Shocking and devastating, but essential to read.

obviously being in jail is worse than being free.And being in America is freer than the hell of North Korea. But are there ways in which we are heading towards a solitary confinement as such? Books like 1984 or Manufacturing Consent show us how important it is to keep us isolated so as to control thought and behavior. The wholesale destruction of our environment has led to very bizarre notions of what nature is and what it means to be immersed in it. Wendell Berry has some great quotes on nature...

Devastating. This book collects together testimony from current and former detainees being held under conditions of solitary confinement. Part of this book's function is informative on a factual level, and other parts lay open the imaginative space. It boggles the mind. Essential reading.

In Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray there are no consequences to Dorian Gray's actions, no matter what they are. He has abdicated his conscience and until the rather horrible end, cares nothing for anyone but himself. A very pyschopathic life.And so it is with the men in solitary confinement. Most of them are either on death row or in prison for life without parole. Between 10% and 25% of violent criminals are measurably psychopathic (both on the Hare Checklist and on brain scans)>. The

Perhaps the most radical accomplishment of this collection of essays is that it seeks to humanize those we have deemed inhuman. I hesitate to write much about this book because my words should not get in the way of the words of those who've not only gone through this hell, but chose to write about it. All I can add is that I believe it is the civic duty of every American to read this book.

Your world has shrunk to a small airless room, 4 1/2 X 9 feet--narrow enough that you can't stretch your arms side to side without hitting the wall, long enough to lie down, with an extra foot to spare beyond the bed. You share your room with a bed, a combination toilet/sink, and a small box which holds everything you own. You are alone. Profoundly, totally alone. No one talks to you. No one listens to you. No one hears you. As hours stretch to days, weeks, months, years, and decades alone, you

I knew it would be important to read accounts of people in solitary confinement -- I didn't know that the writing would be so breathtaking. These essays are simply incredible; well-crafted, unexpected, fully-felt, extremely diverse in content and tone, and surprisingly gripping. A book that feels like an "ought to" read is actually un-put-downable.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/...

Repetitive but important to understand.

An important book on an under researched yet widespread phenomena. Mix of essays from people who've spent years or decades in solitary, ending with testimonials from experts and lawyers on what could be done to reduce the prevalence of solitary confinement in the American system.

It's really easy to dismiss solitary confinement as an unimportant problem because it only affects people who have done something 'terrible' and are being punished for it under the laws by which we all must abide. However, as a society we've agreed to not inflict "cruel and unusual punishments" on prisoners, and this book convinced me that solitary confinement should be considered cruel and unusual and that its use should end.I'd definitely recommend reading it (it's quite short!) because it giv...

“Hell Is a Very Small Place” is a collection of essays about solitary confinement, primarily written by prisoners... Read More

you know, i have sympathy for inhuman conditions on death row, and believe in the Innocence Project's good work. But you don't get on death row solitary by being a Boy Scout. and it takes some kind of f**cked up to dig your poop out of the toilet, liquify it, put it into water bottles to spray on others. Read this gruesome account with a dose of skepticism, and not after eating a meal.

The strength of this book lies in the first hand accounts of the realities of solitary confinement. The powerful and horrifying essays told from prisoners, some of whom are still imprisoned in solitary confinement, are as strong an argument against this practice as I can imagine. The accompanying academic essays can get repetitive and are more of a footnote. I'll admit to skimming some of the legalese, but was completely absorbed by the stories of the prisoners. I think it's almost impossible to...

I always subscribed to the idea that if you do the crime, then you do the time. Period. If solitary confinement is mandated, then that’s just too bad. After reading this book, listening to the voices of those imprisoned and especially seeing the physical and psychological effects prolonged (and we’re talking years, and years, and years) solitary has on individuals...I’ve begun to realize something’s definitely off with our judicial system.

Incredibly hard to read but worth the enlightenment of tortuous effects of solitary confinement. Essays by prisoners and advocates of eliminating solitary expose what’s going on behind bars, and it is horrifying.

I smell a rat! Below are quotes taken from this book and compared against quotes taken from “24/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary” by Keramet Reiter. The quotes are by and about Todd Ashker.Todd: “While at new Folsom SHU, on May 25, 1987, I entered a guy’s (Dirty Dennis Murphy) cell for a prearranged fight. He’d challenged me to a fistfight to settle some fabricated beef. I had to accept; it was that or request protective custody, which I’d never do. His cellmate immediate...

Hell is a Very Small Place is partially a collection of essays of people who are or were in solitary confinement telling stories about their experiences. It is also composed of essays from lawyers, professors, psychologists, and journalists about why solitary confinement is unethical and illogical.The essays telling the stories of peoples experiences are diverse in demographics and eerily similar as far as the abuses and torture suffered in each place. All of the essays tell stories of the desce...

1. A book written in North America: Hell is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement edited by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway and Sarah ShourdList Progress: 9/30Trigger warning: Torture, mass incarceration.It felt important to me to read a book like this for the North American category this year: one that gave me a look into my own culture similarly to how international books let me look into other cultures. I wanted to read about a widely unspoken or unexamined trait of American cultu...