Hard Time: Voices From A State Prison, 1849-1914 is the story of the state penitentiary at Stillwater, Minnesota -- a dangerous, sometimes lethal, stone fortress erected for the purpose of exacting punishment and penance from it's inmate population. Enhanced throughout with period photography, Hard Times is a documentary history of the facility where those men deemed incorrigible were send to do "hard time" and which, over the sixty-five years of its existed, evolved to become one of the most respected penal institutions in the nation. Hard Times offers up such memorable events as the imprisonment of the Younger gang in 1876; the prison fire of 1884; the escape of Frank P. Landers and Oscar J. Carlon in 1887; the "twine shop insurrection" of 1899; the manhunt for escaped convicts Peter Juhl and Jerrfy McCarty in 1911; and a great deal more. Very highly recommended contribution to Penology Studies; Minnesota History; and American History supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections...

I read this book years ago while living in California, working with many Mexican immigrants as a school teacher. Coyotes spoke right to my heart...I couldn't put it down. I think Ted Connover is an excellent writer and a very brave, intelligent and adventurous guy! This continues to be my all time favorite book; the one I lend out to my dearest friends. I am looking forward to reading his other books.

Conover travels with various groups of illegal immigrants and immerses himself in their world. His firsthand accounts cover an impressively broad set of immigrant experiences--the small Mexican towns filled with adventure-seeking youth, journeys to the border, negotiations with smugglers, run-ins with police, finding work in the U.S., and adjusting to a new life. Through it all, Conover maintains his point of view as a middle-class American Everyman, making the book accessible to the average Joe. Yet he always keeps his eyes and ears open to the people and events he encounters.

The book makes it apparent that a criminal industry of smugglers, thieves and corrupt cops has sprung up to take advantage of cash-carrying immigrants before they even leave Mexico. Meanwhile, the relatively small Border Patrol is spread too thin to turn back all but a few crossers, who with a little persistence can try their luck the next night.

Though the media tends to portray illegal immigrants as simply the latest generation of noble achievers looking for the American Dream, Conover's work shows how the current wave of immigration from Mexico is different. The new immigrants are often more loyal to their homeland than to their adopted country, travel back and forth with ease, and can find ethnic comfort zones where they can make American dollars but never have to learn American culture. The book describes events that happened in the mid-1980s, but it's more timely than ever as continued high immigration levels keep this issue on the front burner.

Having recently read NEWJACK: GUARDING SING SING, I was motivated to look into other Conover works. The impression he left with Newjack was to be reinforced by the flawless COYOTES.

Conover, the authour, goes where no American would dare. He befriends and lives along side Mexican immigrants who cross the border every year to find agricultural jobs. He details several occassions of crossing the border, a series of hardships and dangers. In his tales the reader is given first hand accounts of brutal mexican police, pesky immigration officers, and the ruthless and dangerous coyotes who smuggle illegals over the border and throughout the border territories. For Conover, interviews were not enough, he walked more than a few miles in their shoes.

Not only does Conover do the adrenaline pumping crossings but he lives life on both sides of the border. He spends season in citrus groves in Arizona, California, and Florida. He spends the offseason in a mountainous Mexican ranchero, among what most of us would consider poverty. Through it all he does a moving and mesmorizing job of painting the picture of the migrant worker.

The book is more than investigative non-fiction, it is a flowing story, encompassing a struggle few have accurately documented. The book reads fast, simultaneously entertaing and interesting the reader. This stands as a favorite in any non-fiction collection. Five stars and then some.

Ted Conover's book is another look into the life and culture of prison. However, it differs from a lot of jail narratives as it's written from the guard's perspective. The sense I got from this book only strengthens a view I've held for some time: prisons -- rather, the current state of them -- demean and dehumanize convicts and guards alike. And since we seem to be blindly enamored of using prison as a be-all cure for most offenses, I'm increasingly concerned that we're going to demean our society as well. As a mere account of the prison experience -- and from a man who was able to go home at the end of a shift, rather than a cell --, it's riveting. It's also written very well, bringing Sing Sing's decaying walls and populace to life for the reader. If nothing else, Conover presents a window into what must be one of the hardest (and worst, and dangerous) jobs in society.

When I first read about this book in EW's Best of the Year issue, I was curious. In movies, again and again, we hear the stories of compassionate, wrongly accused inmates (I personally love the moving film the Shawshank Redemption). So when Ted Conover chose to write about his own experience as a guard, a seemingly simple, yet genius point of view, I was very interested. In reading Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, I was educated, entertained and challenged. Conover vividly shares his experiences as well as interesting facts about America's prison system. I laughed (his writing reminds me of Bill Bryson a little, author of A Walk in the Woods) and I reflected throughout the book. No words other than Conover's can explain the profound impact and wonderful quality of Newjack. I loved it and have read it several times since.

The oficer who said that only the liberal media, whatever that is, will appreciate this book, is wrong. I think any professional who agrees that only the light of day will lift us out of the swamp of stereotype will praise this book. Anyone who has worked in a real prison will know that this book is dead on. It's not the truth exactly as some of us would paint it, but let's face it, the what goes on in corrections should stay in corrections attitude is a lot of what our problem is today. Where's the pride in that? To say he's a rat is to say we have dirty secrets that nobody else should know. I say baloney. Do you realize that most people out there think that "guards" are brutal?That's the starting point. Conover uses the word guard, sure, but so does thre rest of the world, and he says officer more. And the point is, he was one and he respects what we go through and the pressure we face. COs are LUCKY to have this book--there won't soon be another that outsiders will BUY that attests to the humanity of those of us who wear the uniform.!!!

A travel book about America, except as seen through the eyes of a constant traveler, the railroad tramp. And, while it does indeed describe some of America, Conover's agenda here is more to understand hobo society. He does this quite well, except where he finally intrudes and makes a bald statement of his opinion, and what he deems to be the reader's opinion, in the last page. Conover is refreshingly naive, in some ways, and not afraid to place his naiveté in what could be considered a work of autobiography. While I doubt someone could use this book as a manual for catching a ride on a rail, it does allow for enough detail to catch some understanding of the complexity and difficulties accompanied thereto.

Although twenty years isnce it was first published, the book has a timeless aspect that is quite moving; essentially, Rolling Nowhere is an indictment of how the most wealthy, powerful and materialistic nation in the history of human civilization treats those who have fallen through the cracks. As taken in and enthralled as I was by the author's experiences, I was in the end more saddened than anything alse.

As a young man, in his early 20s, Ted Conover traveled on foot and by rail over most of the Western states, first with hoboes and then with undocumented farm workers from Mexico. In his travels, he discovered two itinerant worlds, sometimes overlapping, that are often misunderstood, and invisible to most Americans. In many ways naïve and sometimes too trusting, Conover also discovered the limits of his middle class upbringing. His first two books, "Rolling Nowhere" and "Coyotes" were based on his experiences. Together they represent a kind of coming of age in America.

With little knowledge of real hobo life, Conover left college in the East, jumped a train in St. Louis and headed west. In the months that followed, he crossed and recrossed 14 states, meeting and traveling with a dozen or more modern-day hoboes. He learned from them how to survive, living off of handouts, sleeping rough, avoiding the railroad police. And he learned about loneliness and loss of identity.

There are moments of pure pleasure, a tin cup of steaming coffee on a cold high plains morning, the unbroken landscape gliding by open boxcar doors. And there are times when the romance of adventure disappears completely -- in bad weather and bad company. I greatly enjoyed this book and was often touched by Conover's youthful pursuit of independence and experience, often taking risks and crashing head-on into realities he does not anticipate. At the end, the romance of the rails has been pretty much stripped away; he's not sorry, but he's had enough.

His book "Coyotes" is a great companion to this one, as it shows him a little older and somewhat wiser, on yet another risk-taking adventure that throws him into yet another marginal world.

Ted Conover has a distinctive modus operandus. He writes ethnographic studies of disadvantaged people by becoming part of the population as much as possible. He began, as a college student, becoming a hobo and riding the rails, as documented in "Rolling Nowhere". In his brilliant "Coyotes", he's amazingly successful at integrating himself into the illegal alien population, crossing secretly into the USA several times with Mexican migrant laborers. Most readers will know him from his recent "Newjack", where he becomes a prison guard and Sing-Sing to comment on the lives of guards and inmates.

"Whiteout" is the odd man out in Conover's oeuvre. We're on familiar territory initially - Conover is a cab driver in Aspen, spying on the lives of tourists while living the life of a working stiff. But he never fully commits, living with a wealthy friend in a palatial mansion, and later house-sitting for another millionaire. Later, he becomes a reporter for the local paper, and most of the book reads like extended versions of the newspaper stories he had opportunity to cover. We get a number of interesting pictures of life in Apsen, from ski bums to society madams, to an odd interlude in northern Florida with a former drug runner who _used_ to be based out of Aspen.

Perhaps the shotgun approach is meant to mirror the diversity and complexity of the interaction of social classes in Aspen. Or perhaps Conover saw an opportunity to turn a year off in Apsen into a book with a major publisher. Either way, the reader is left wishing that Conover would pick someone - anyone - to identify with, profile and feature. Instead, we get a mishmash that could only be appealing to readers interested in Apsen or the celebrities who live there. Skip this one and pick up any of his other books instead.

Once again, Ted Connover came through with a completely unique glimpse of a society few people are able to witness. With an amazing gift for immersing himself in different cultures, Ted provides a glimpse into the mostly ultra-rich lifestyle of the Aspenites. I found this novel to be thoroughly entertaining and thought provoking.

Ted Conover, who's known for his looks at the grittier side of life, tried something different in this book: a look at privilege and pleasure as they are enshrined in Aspen, CO. I think that writing about the rich is probably harder than it sounds--for one thing, the average reader doesn't have a lot of sympathy, and for another, most social analysis is directed at the less fortunate. But Conover looks, mostly seriously, at a place that is fairly silly, and the result is Insight of a very high grade.

The focus goes both tight and wide, the observations are sharp but not dismissive; we find ourselves in the company of starlets and busboys alike, and presented with quite a few moral dilemmas (is it RIGHT to live this way? how come everybody in the real world looks less attractive after Aspen?). Conover's candor alone makes Whiteout worth the price of admission. If your soul is lingering in Sing Sing after reading Newjack, this Rocky Mountain sojourn could be just the thing you need ...