Frank and enlightening.
A guide to surviving (but not necessarily thriving) in prison if you’ve made some really bad decisions.
Personal trainer and ex-prisoner Nelson wastes no time admitting to his sketchy past, writing, “In my younger years, I was a total fuckup addicted to drugs who committed lots of crimes to perpetuate and support my crazy habit.” He served a total of 17 years for his crimes, which included armed robbery, drug dealing, and battery, and shared the lessons he learned in this book co-written with prolific television showrunner Sheridan (who has probably created two more series by the time you have finished reading this sentence). Written as a guide for those who might end up behind bars, their book gives readers numerous tips on how to survive prison, including how to find your “car” (a group of fellow convicts with whom you hang out), which prison jobs to look for, and which foods and beverages might disappoint you (pretty much all of them, especially chow-hall coffee, which “tastes like cigarette ashes brewed in butt juice stew”). Readers will find instructions on making shivs and tattoo guns alongside recipes for making meals out of commissary purchases (pozole made from corn nuts, anyone?) and instructions for card games. Sheridan and Nelson write in an entertainingly direct style—section titles include “The Fine Art of Hiding Things in Your Butt” and “Escape Schemes: A Total Fucking Waste of Time”—and there are touches of humor, but this is also a deeply sensitive book, addressing themes of suicidal ideation and sexual assault. The book ends with tips on re-entry into civilian life and a lesson on “keeping your ass out of prison for good.” This is obviously a valuable collection of lessons for the penitentiary-bound, but even readers who wouldn’t dream of jaywalking will find it an informative look at the country’s broken prison system, as well as its residents, whom society tends to forget.
Frank and enlightening.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668213452
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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