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

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.