American Prison -- Shane Bauer
American Prison by Shane Bauer is a searing portrait of American prisons and the historic injustices of our system of incarceration. Bauer, a journalist who had been imprisoned in Iran, turned his attention to the privatization of American prisons while reporting for Mother Jones. Hired as a guard (they never checked his background) at a privately-run prison in Louisiana, he surreptitiously recorded his four-month-long experience. His book provides a vivid first-hand account of who he met and what he saw, interwoven with a very depressing critique of America’s long history of using convicts as forced labor for the profit of others. A tremendous book.