An empathetic and well-characterized book that will add complexity to debates about mass incarceration.
Compassionate inquiry into the hidden phenomena of prison relationships, particularly the “MWI” (Met While Incarcerated) demographic.
Greenwood was inspired by her own correspondence with a jailed white-collar criminal she met researching her first book, Playing Dead: “Could you find love and vivacity in the ugliest of places? And what are the prisons we erect for ourselves?” She frames these inquiries against the grim reality of this country’s incarceration rate (the highest in the world) and its disproportionate effect on poorer individuals and communities of color. At the same time, the author observes that MWI “prison wives” are often middle-class Whites who are drawn to church service groups or prisoner pen-pal websites, a phenomenon that serves as an example of the complex social realities uncovered here. Greenwood opens with the marriage of ex-soldier Jo to Benny, an affable recidivist with a disturbing background of domestic violence, and alternates between the arc of their tumultuous, ultimately successful union and those of several other couples. These include a retired Canadian diplomat who wed and then split from an American woman convicted of murder, a trans woman and a bisexual African American man serving time in the same institution, and a couple who stayed together following the prisoner’s wrongful conviction being overturned, who “still came home with all the trauma of anyone who has spent almost half his life in prison.” The resilience of MWI spouses is personified throughout by Jo, who observes, “I don’t have any problem waiting for him to come home from prison. Because he’s my husband.” Greenwood makes good use of interviews with prisoners, academics, and others, and the writing is observant, humorous, and even sensuous, as when the author and Jo attend a conference for prisoners’ families and hear frank talk about the realities of frustration and conjugal visits. “For once, they are in a place where people understand,” writes the author. “They needn’t pretend or defend.”
An empathetic and well-characterized book that will add complexity to debates about mass incarceration.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5841-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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