In light of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the brutality of American prisons may seem almost quaint. That said, there's plenty to lament as you read journalist Ted Conover's account of his year as a fledgling guard at New York's notorious Sing Sing prison. Alternating between his education in the "care, custody, and control" of modern inmates and the past two centuries of American penal practice as seen through the history of Sing Sing, Conover manages to thoroughly illuminate a world that most of us fervently pray never to see. At the end of line, you feel sympathy for the inmates and the guards, as both groups are forced to suffer unbearable emotional stress.

Harold Check