| [ my latest book ]
NEWJACK Guarding Sing Sing
(UK title: HOLDING THE KEY)
"An amazing book about life in prison. ... 'Newjack' is about as good as it gets-by turns gripping, funny, frightening and sad. ... The stories are spellbinding and the telling is clear and cold. But Conover doesn't just want to chill us or gross us out. He wants us to think about prisons and to rethink them." — The Washington Post "George Orwell, you have a godson. Upton Sinclair, you've been one-upped. … In this mind-blowing example of journalism at its most authentic, Conover discovers that prison can bring out the animal in any man, and even the zookeeper has to protect his soul." — Entertainment Weekly "Newjack is an astonishing work by a gifted and dedicated journalist. Ted Conover takes us into the dangerous, sad, amusing and instructive soul of one of America's best-known prisons." — Tom Brokaw "[H]is straightforward sentences have accomplished something formidable; he has made us fully part of his experience. ... [C]ompelling and inescapable.... [I]t is hard to imagine any journalist doing his more daringly or effectively. ... 'Newjack' coheres as a moving indictment of our ways of punishment."— The New York Times Book Review "Nobody goes to greater lengths to get a story than Ted Conover. Immersing himself in his subject to a degree matched by few journalists working today, he has given us a compelling, compassionate look at a terribly important, poorly understood aspect of American society. My hat is off to him." — Jon Krakauer "Compelling.... [F]ascinating.... 'Newjack' is an important cautionary tale.... Conover is to be commended for having the chops to venture where few others would dare to go." — The Los Angeles Times "['Newjack'] is the boldest project that Conover has pulled off, no small claim for a writer who has spent his career penetrating deep into shrouded territory and emerging with spicy yarns." — L.A. Times Living Section "It is easy to ignore or even resist an outsider who critiques our profession. We like to wash our dirty laundry out of the range of prying eyes. However, Ted Conover ... deserves our careful attention. In 'Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing,' he unlocks some doors of the prison culture in one of America's most recognizable and troubled prisons. This is an intensely personal account and, therefore, is subjective. But Conover ... has done his homework. 'Newjack' ... is fair, sympathetic and ... very moving." — Corrections Today (American Correctional Assocation) "Ted Conover is a first-rate reporter and more daring and imaginative than the rest of us combined. This book is one of his finest." — Sebastian Junger "This book takes a reader inside one of the many locked doors of America's penal system. It is clear-eyed and sympathetic, intelligent and engrossing. It reminded me of some of George Orwell's admirable journalism." — Tracy Kidder "A fascinating and sobering read." — USA Today "[P]retty damned amazing ... entirely gripping and powerful." — Sherman Alexie "[A]n endlessly fascinating, often suspenseful book.... 'Newjack' might set the standard for years to come." — Christian Science Monitor "Riveting ... hits home." — People "[A] fascinating look at how prison brutalizes men and women on both sides of the bars." — Entertainment Weekly "Profoundly eye-opening....[H]e brilliantly demonstrates how life in prison brutalizes both the kept and their keepers." — Chicago Sun Times "Sharply brings to life the confusion and brutality of this untouchable world." — San Francisco magazine "[A]n ambitious investigation. ... Conover reveals a world of emotional deprivation and physical threat that leaves inmates without resources to face life outside the walls. ... 'Newjack' is a valuable contribution to the urgent debate about crime and punishment in our time. ... Conover brings his considerable journalistic and literary skills to bear..." — Boston Globe "[A] fascinating story, a behind-the-scenes look at a closed world few have been allowed to see." — San Diego Union Tribune "[A] devastating chronicle of the toll prison life takes on the prisoners and the keepers of the keys. You can't get more inside than this ... Conover brilliantly conveys the confusion and frustration of trying to use the lessons of the Academy [for training guards] in a real-time situation." — Minneapolis Star Tribune "A timely, troubling, important book." — Baltimore Sun "[A]n incisive and indelible look at the life of a corrections officer and the dark life of the penal system." — The Dallas Morning News "[A] harrowing account of life inside the notorious institution in Ossining, N.Y. ... experiential journalism at its best." — The Denver Post "The title of this book belies all that it contains. 'Newjack' . . . offers more "Riveting....[A]rresting." — Maxim "[G]ripping ... This is a book full of big ideas." — Boulder Daily Camera "Fascinating." —Denver Rocky Mountain News "In books like 'Rolling Nowhere' (about hoboes) and 'Coyotes' (about illegal aliens), Conover distinguished himself with brave, empathetic reporting. This riveting book goes further. ... With its nuanced portraits of officers and inmates, the book never preaches, yet it conveys that we ignore our prisons ... at our collective peril." — Publisher's Weekly "Those who craft theories and make policy must read this book if they are to understand how those theories and policies affect people ..." — San Diego Union Tribune "Compelling." — Library Journal Reviews from overseas:
"A thrilling, moving book." — Stern"A superb cautionary tale [from] one of America's best-regarded
journalists." — Glasgow Evening Times
"One of the most convincing and bloody autopsies of the American penitentiary system." — El Periódico (Barcelona)
Review of the audio book:
"Newjack is arresting, unsettling ... Conover reads with the natural ease of a professional actor." — Bookpage
from the cover Ted Conover, the intrepid author of Coyotes, about the world of illegal Mexican immigrants, spent a year as a prison guard at Sing Sing. Newjack, his account of that experience, is a milestone in American journalism: a book that casts new and unexpected light on this nation's prison crisis and sets a new standard for courageous, in-depth reporting. At the infamous Sing Sing, once a model prison but now New York State's most troubled maximum-security facility, Conover goes to work as a gallery officer, working shifts in which he alone must supervise scores of violent inner-city felons. He soon learns the impossibility of doing his job by the book. What should he do when he feels the hair-raising tingle that tells him a fight is about to break out? When he loses a key in a tussle? When a prisoner punches him in the head? Little by little, he learns to walk the fine line between leniency and tyranny that distinguishes a good guard. Along the way, we meet a cast of characters that includes a tough but appealing supervisor named Mama Cradle; a range of mentally ill prisoners, or "bugs"; some of the jail's more flamboyant transvestites; and a philosophical, charismatic inmate who points out to Conover that the United States is building new prisons for future felons who are now only four and five years old. Conover also gives us a history of Sing Sing (it was built by inmates, and for decades was the nation's capital of capital punishment) in a chapter that serves as a brilliant short course in America's penal system. With empathy and insight, Newjack tells the story of a harsh, hidden world and dramatizes the conflict between the necessity to isolate criminals and the dehumanization—of guards as well as inmates—that almost inevitably takes place behind bars.
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