Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars - Softcover

Rideau, Wilbert; Wikberg, Ron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812920481 ISBN 13: 9780812920482

Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 1992

Synopsis

Drawing on their award-winning reporting for the Louisiana State Penitentiary's uncensored newsmagazine, The Angolite, Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg present the stark reality of life behind bars and the human, political, and fiscal costs of our long-running war on crime.

About this title

About the Author

Ron Wikberg, associate editor of The Angolite, was convicted of murder in 1969. He began writing for the magazine in 1971 and joined the staff in 1987. He was paroled in 1992. Wilbert Rideau has been the editor-in-chief of The Angolite since 1975. An eighth-grade dropout, he was convicted of murder in 1961 and spent eleven years on death row at Angola, where he taught himself to write. He has been the subject of segments on 20/20, Nightline, and National Public Radio.

From the Back Cover

"...required reading for all fifty United States governors and for all present and future Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates...the most convincing argument I have read against our nationwide desire to deal with lawbreakers by 'locking 'em up and throwing away the key.'"

-- Russell Banks, The New York Times Book Review

"Life Sentences is an aberration. Out of the violence, madness and uselessness has come a work of uncommon and lasting value."

-- Colman McCarthy, Washington Post Book World

"Life Sentences is an extraordinary act of courage that should prick the conscience of every American. Rideau and Wikberg take readers inside the bowels of Angola...Within such a manmade hell, they become living proof that some can rise above the cesspool despite colossal odds."

-- Pete Earley, author of The Hothouse: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison

From the Inside Flap

heir award-winning reporting for the Louisiana State Penitentiary's uncensored newsmagazine, The Angolite, Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg present the stark reality of life behind bars and the human, political, and fiscal costs of our long-running war on crime.

Reviews

Convicted murderers Rideau and Wikberg began contributing articles to the Angolite , the best-known prison newspaper in the U.S., shortly after receiving life sentences in the 1960s. From the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the newspaper's editor-in-chief Rideau (once a death row inmate), associate editor Wikberg and other inmates write with grace, detail and well-balanced insight about Angola's history (musicans Leadbelly and Charles Neville have been confined there), sexual assault, prison politics, death in prison and procedures of prison executions. Articles in the Angolite have won the George Polk and other journalism awards. Editors' notes usefully update these pieces, first published between 1978 and 1990. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Three Rivers Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812920481
• ISBN 13: 9780812920482
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352