Nico's blog

Book: Alcatraz From Inside (Jim Quillen, 1991)

Context

I bought this book at the shop of Alcatraz Island while touring the famous prison last September - which reminds me that I should write a quick blog article about this.

The book's cover sums it up well: "One man's climb from desperation to redemption": this is the story of Jim Quillen, a criminal who ends up in Alcatraz - we follow him from his early days until his transfer to another prison, and finally getting out of prison and living a normal life.

My Thoughts

This is a very interesting reading, for a variety of reasons:

• a reminder that even though you had bad times and spent time in prison, you can change for the best,
• Quillen's writing is at the same time very pleasant and very honest: he's not minimizing what he's done and shows respect to the institutions, while also pointing out things that didn't work
• a good example is how he relates the failed escape from 1946, which could have been shortened and save lifes, but because of decisions taken by the prison's staff, this did not happen.
• as many folks, I knew Alcatraz as a famous name, but I never spent a lot of time on its history - for instance, I was surprised to learn that it closed a long time ago (1963) - I thought it was a lot more recent, like in the 80s.

TL;DR: a good book if you're interested in Alcatraz' story, and more generally are hopeful about anyone's future.

Tags: Books