Many years ago I used this book as corrolary reading in a criminal justice course that I was teaching. Among my students were jailers, probation officers, a sheriff, a San Quentin correctional officer (sometimes referred to as a "prison guard")and others in the field of criminal justice. Although I had scheduled the book to be read during the course of the entire semester, virtually all of my students finished it on their own in the first couple of weeks. They found this to be a compelling and engrossing account of Braly's failed attempts to stay out of prison during most of his adult life, until he finally succeeded at leaving prison permanently behind at age 40. Braly described this book as his effort to understand why he seemingly sabotaged those attempts up to that point. The quality of his writing is superb, engrossing and compelling. No one reading this book will be surprised that, after finally succeeding in staying out of prison, he became an accomplished author and university professor of English. This is an excellent book, one that I have passed on to others as a gift.

This is an autobiography of the 18+ years Braly spent in various penal institutions. He is a brave man to recount in detail many things that happened to him, things that most would not admit. His style is poetic but not romantic. A must read for everyone curious about real prison life.

Today, in America, we take it for granted if you do something wrong and get caught your going to the big house. So much so that no matter where you live or what you make you probably know someone stinking up a prison cell. Most of us have very little notion of what life is really like inside of a real prison where a few people try to live normal lives behind glass. These are usually the crimes of passion people not the career criminal. This book spends alot of time paring the crimes of passion people against the perpetual criminal. Of course no one wins in the end.

The prison depicted in this book is somewhat dated, reminding me somewhat of the prison in Brute Force, the Dassin/Lancaster film. The author has a disjointed perspective jumping from person to person, backward and forward, much like a film. He probably watched alot of films during his 15 year stint alot of westerns i'd guess...

If you can imagine what it's like to to shed 40 years of skin around some of the craziest loons never to read a book then you can imagine why we need more novels about prison life. I consider this the confederacy of the dunces of prison novels.
Read it and bolster boy, enjoy them and be good.