Reviews

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

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risagross's review against another edition

4.0

This book is thoroughly researched and clearly written. However: editing?! Perhaps the editor just skipped the pages after the uprising.

The book could stand to be significantly shorter. At least, there should have been a shorter version for non-academic plebeians like myself. Once the book gets into the legal aftermath of the uprising, it provides more detail than I’ll ever want or need — and certainly more than I can hope to retain.

The real problem I have with the editing, though, is more trivial: someone failed to catch the author’s abundant use of “myriad.” In one section, those things were so plentiful that I considered tallying them, but then I realized I’d have to revisit a fair amount of legal minutiae in order to do so. Not worth it.

Bottom line: this is a very good book in desperate need of editing. But I give it four stars for the research alone. Good thing I’m not rating on “ability to use a thesaurus.”

bexmcphedran's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative sad slow-paced

5.0

karimorton33's review against another edition

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4.0

A really compelling and heartbreaking read about the atrocities that prisoners had to endure at the hands of the state at Attica in 1971, and into the current day. This book was a really comprehensive look at what led up to the events in 1971, and what happened after. At times I found it almost too detailed and too long, but in the end the details were jaw-dropping, to imagine that something like this happened and continues to happen to this day. People who are incarcerated are humans like the rest of us, and no one deserves to have these kinds of actions taken against them. The cover up by the state was incomprehensible, and the resulting "awards" for those affected were so minimal. If a bit long, still a really compelling, unbelievable read. (read for the Book Riot 2018 Read Harder Challenge -
read a book of true crime)

hefestx's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

sarahd3's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

5.0

abrswf's review against another edition

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4.0

There are so many good things to say about this very, very long book. The depth of Thompson's research is simply astounding. She dug deep to find every available source and document about the Attica uprising and its aftermath. The book is long because it carefully covers the causes and lead-up to the uprising, the uprising itself, the re-taking, and the long history of commissions, reports, lawsuits, and legislative responses to the event. And the writing is crystal clear. Finally, the narrator, Erin Bennett, does a superb job. For 22 plus hours. But -- the book is unbelievably slanted. Thompson never makes a pretense of an effort to be objective or cover this complicated story in a nuanced and balanced way. And that is too bad because there is a lot more to what happened than an inspiring story of prisoner struggle against injustice, cued to leftist anthem music. Conditions at Attica were deplorable, but the uprising was stained with blood: it included the murder of a corrections officer, rape, hostage-taking (aka kidnapping) of nearly 40 people, and knives at the throats of many of the hostages, who were also positioned as human shields, just before the re-taking. That the re-taking was just as bad, including reckless use of lethal force, murder, and egregious (and racist) mistreatment of prisoners for a long time afterward, and a deliberate cover-up that included incendiary lies about prisoner behavior, does not wash the uprising clean. Moreover, the violent re-taking could actually have been avoided, and the alleged objective of great improvement in prison conditions could have been achieved if the prisoners had accepted the negotiated terms offered by New York's prison commissioner. That the prisoners who revolted demanded amnesty instead means they prioritized escaping responsibility for their conduct over the reforms they said motivated the revolt. And that refusal to accept offered reforms led as much as anything else to the punitive measures that flowed from the Attica event. In an effort to turn every prisoner who protests into a leftist icon, this book ignores this. (It also whitewashes the reality that many people who end up in prison are there because of the pain and harm they have inflicted on victims, and that many do not behave well in prison either.) I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to know what happened before, during, and after Attica. But be warned -- it is very, very flawed by its skewed perspective, overt editorializing, and propagandistic tone.