Heather Ann Thompson. Blood in the Water

Heather Ann Thompson’s authoritative account of the 1971 revolt at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, and the administrative cover-up that followed is a page-turner. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy is exhaustively researched and skillfully written, moving deftly between personal accounts from an astonishing array of people and the voluminous state papers, institutional reports, and legal records chronicling the events. Thompson demonstrates the power of storytelling as she brings to life the decisions, fears, and pain of dozens of people at the heart of one of the most important civil rights protests in U.S. history. The Attica uprising ended when state troopers and prison guards stormed the prison with guns blazing, killing thirty-nine people in one of the deadliest assaults by the state against its own citizens in U.S. history—a fact that New York state officials have gone to great lengths to keep from public knowledge.

Art · Criminology · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Power (physics) · Prison · Sociology · State (computer science) · Storytelling · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies