Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: American Prison
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.shanebauer.net/
CITY: Oakland
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. 1983, in MN.
EDUCATION:Graduated from University of California, Berkeley, 2007.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Mother Jones, senior reporter. Has worked undercover as a prison guard and in a paramilitary movement.
AWARDS:National Magazine Award for Best Reporting, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism, Izzy Stone Award, John Jay Award for Criminal Justice Reporting (two-time recipient).
WRITINGS
Contributor to magazines and newspapers, including Salon, Nation, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Christian Science Monitor.
SIDELIGHTS
Shane Bauer is a writer, investigative journalist, and magazine reporter. He serves as the senior reporter at Mother Jones magazine. He has specialized in reporting from the Middle East and from locations such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. His work has appeared in major publications such as the Nation, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times. The winner of multiple awards, he has earned a National Magazine Award for Best Reporting, a Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, and two John Jay Awards for Criminal Justice Reporting.
A Sliver of Light
In an event that made international headlines, Bauer was imprisoned in Iran for several months along with his fiancée, Sara Shourd, and their friend Josh Fattal. The three tell their story in A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran. Bauer, Shourd, and Fattal were three Americans hiking in northern Iraqi Kurdistan in 2009 when they mistakenly crossed the border into Iran. The area they were in had no border markings, and the rugged terrain made it impossible to tell when they had entered another country. They were arrested by Iranian forces and, despite their assertions that they were journalists and teachers who had accidentally crossed into Iran, they were charged with spying and sent to prison.
Bauer and Fattal spent two years in harsh conditions in the Iranian prison. Shourd was released after a year and worked tirelessly to get the other two released. In their account, the three “remind the world how human, vulnerable, and terribly isolated they were during their months of incarceration,” being frequently moved to different locations, noted a Kirkus Reviews writer. Against their will, they “became convenient pawns in the ongoing political enmity between the United States and Iran,” the Kirkus Reviews contributor pointed out, political weapons in matters involving sanctions, nuclear weapons, or other important subjects.
The three authors, who tell their stories in alternating first-person chapters, reveal their fears during captivity and how they managed to endure their imprisonment. Shourd was kept in solitary confinement since she was not allowed to interact with Iranians. Bauer and Fattal were allowed to room together and spent time creating ways to keep themselves occupied and their minds off their predicament. All three learned that they needed to stand up for themselves as much as possible, even when it came to small matters and the individual freedoms they were allowed.
Steve Uhrich, writing in Booklist, commented that their “engaging story portrays the horrors of imprisonment and the danger that awaits any intrepid traveler” who gets between two governments in conflict with each other. “At its best, the narrative captures the claustrophobic atmosphere of daily life in prison,” remarked a Publishers Weekly contributor.
American Prison
Bauer takes a careful look at incarceration from the other side of the wall in American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment. In this account, he describes in depth what happened when he set out to explore the inside workings of the American prison system. At first, he met with little cooperation from prison authorities. “It’s very difficult to get access to prison systems—they’re reluctant to even abide by public-records laws. It’s a very concerted effort to keep the public out, which I’ve since learned has gotten worse over time. And this is especially true with private prisons, because those laws often don’t even apply,” Bauer said in an interview with Benjamin Hart in the Daily Intelligencer. He finally decided that the best way to get information he wanted was from the inside, so in 2015 he took a job—at the salary of nine dollars an hour—as a prison guard at the private Winn Correctional Facility in Louisiana. He knew he was taking a considerable risk, not just with his presence in the prison but with the hidden camera and recorder he took inside with him. Despite the potential for trouble, he spent four months at the prison, where he made numerous discoveries that reflected poorly not just on the Winn facility but on prisons in general. Bauer even came to some startling and disconcerting realizations about himself.
At Winn, Bauer saw firsthand how difficult the job of prison guard was. The pay was poor, but the conditions were worse, with some twenty-four guards expected to control nearly 1,500 inmates. He saw abuse and brutality meted out by guards who had gone beyond the point of caring, and neglect of prisoners who needed medical treatment, educational opportunities, and recreational programs. He saw the harsh conditions that prisoners had to live under and the desperation and frequent despair that they experienced. He also saw how the prisoners were exploited as a source of cheap labor and compared the system to modern-day slavery. At the worst, Bauer saw how easy it was for the guards and staff of the prison to slip into apathy and becoming willing to hand out abuse, because he was becoming like that himself.
“Deprivation, abuse, and fear oppress inmates and guards alike in this hard-hitting expose of the for-profit prison industry,” stated a writer in Publishers Weekly. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Bauer’s book a “penetrating expose on the cruelty and mind-bending corruption of privately run prisons across the United States.” Bauer’s “historical and journalistic work should be required reading,” commented Emily Dziuban, writing in Booklist.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2014, Steve Uhrich, review of A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran, p. 7; August 1, 2018, Emily Dziuban, review of American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment, p. 6.
California, spring, 2017, Katia Savchuk, “Shane Bauer Puts the Teeth Back into Undercover Reporting.”
Daily Intelligencer, September 21, 2018, Benjamin Hart, “Shane Bauer Talks Working Undercover in a Private Prison,” interview with Shane Bauer.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2014, review of A Sliver of Light; June 15, 2018, review of American Prison.
Publishers Weekly, December 9, 2013, review of A Sliver of Light, p. 58; June 18, 2018, review of American Prison, p. 96.
ONLINE
Shane Bauer website, http://www.shanebauer.net (October 16, 2018).
About
Shane_Bauer_2013_headshot_200x450 (1 of 1)
Shane Bauer is a senior reporter at Mother Jones magazine. In 2015, Shane took a job as a prison guard in Louisiana to investigate corporate-run prisons, the subject of the award-wining piece, “My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard.” In 2016, he went undercover again to investigate America’s resurgent right-wing paramilitary movement. Earlier in his career, Shane focused on the Middle East, reporting from locations such as Iraq, Sudan, Chad, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Israel/Palestine. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Salon, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. His journalism has garnered a number of national awards, including a National Magazine Award for Best Reporting, a Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, a Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism, an Izzy Stone Award, two John Jay Awards for Criminal Justice Reporting, and many others. From 2009-2011 Shane was held hostage in Iran with Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal. Together they co-authored a memoir, A Sliver of Light, published by Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt. He is currently writing a book about for-profit prisons.
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Print Marked Items
Shane Bauer Talks Working Undercover
in a Private Prison
Daily Intelligencer.
(Sept. 21, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 New York Media
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/
Full Text:
Byline: Benjamin Hart
In 2014, investigative reporter Shane Bauer - who three years earlier had been freed from
(https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/world/middleeast/hikers-return-to-us-after-release-from-iran.html) a
notorious Iranian prison - embarked on a daring journalistic experiment. He took a job as a $9-an-hour
private-prison guard at Winn Correctional Facility in Louisiana, and with the help of a well-placed recorder
and camera, managed to capture the inner workings of the sort of place reporters rarely ever venture to.
What he experienced during his four-month tenure at Winn, which ended with him hastily fleeing his
apartment after his ruse was discovered, was disturbing on many levels, from the gross mistreatment of
inmates to his own transformation into hardened prison guard. Bauer wrote all about it in a widely hailed
(https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmatesinvestigation-bauer/)
Mother Jones article in 2016. Now he has expanded that piece into a book, American
Prison, in which he intersperses his story with the brutal, long, and little-known history of private prisons in
America. (A sample eye-popping fact: prisoners caught up in the 19th-century "convict leasing" system
experienced a higher death rate than those in Soviet gulags.)
Daily Intelligencer spoke with Bauer about the fundamental inhumanity of private prisons and the future of
mass-incarceration reform.
You write a little about it in the book, but I was wondering if you could explain what compelled you to
embark on this assignment after you'd been imprisoned in Iran for so long.
I'd been reporting in the Middle East - that's where I started my career as a journalist. (Bauer and two
friends were arrested and accused of spying by Iranian authorities in 2009 when they crossed into the
country while on vacation. They were released in 2011 after extensive diplomatic negotiations.) I assumed
I'd return after I got out of prison, but at the time, there was a huge hunger strike going on in California
prisons, protesting the use of long-term solitary confinement. I'd been in solitary myself, so I was naturally
drawn to that story as I watched it unfold. I wasn't ready to go back to work yet, but I started digging into
the issue, and that's what my first story after being released was about. There were 80,000 people on a given
day in solitary, including people who hadn't committed any violent acts; one guy in California was in there
for 40 years. I wrote about that along with my own experiences, and kept getting pulled deeper and deeper
into the American prison system.
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When I started to report on criminal justice, I became more and more frustrated by the walls that are put up
around our prisons. It's very difficult to get access to prison systems - they're reluctant to even abide by
public-records laws. It's a very concerted effort to keep the public out, which I've since learned has gotten
worse over time. And this is especially true with private prisons, because those laws often don't even apply.
So part of me was drawn to it just because we know so little about life inside of these places. I had the idea
of applying for a job and getting inside that way. It only took an hour or two of my time to complete an
application online, which I filled out truthfully. Within a couple of weeks I was getting phone calls, and had
several job offers.
The place I worked was hiring people at $9 an hour, which is determined by the CoreCivics corporate office
in Nashville, not the prison itself. They were so desperate for staff that it felt like they were trying to
convince me to take the job. (CoreCivics changed its name from the Correction Corporation of America in
October 2016, months after Bauer's piece ran.)
You detail a lot of egregious behavior among the fellow guards you worked with, but also underline
repeatedly how little they're paid, how understaffed the place is, and how their training often encourages
brutal tactics. Do you think the kind of person attracted to this work is any more prone to mistreatment than
an average worker?
I didn't have the feeling that my fellow cadets wanted to work in a prison or had any kind of sadistic
motives - they arrived there out of desperation. They had no job experience, or were coming out of high
school, or were single moms who needed to get some insurance. It's true that there was a category of people
more prone to brutality, with backgrounds in law enforcement or prison, who had been driven out of their
former jobs because of things they did and couldn't get hired anywhere else. But in general most people
were there because they were poor and needed work. And once they got into the system, they were faced
with a job that was nearly impossible. There were days where I'd come to work and there were 24 guards
for almost 1,500 inmates. The duties that were required were literally not possible for us to fulfill. The
guards and prisoners would get frustrated with how sloppily the place was run - some would lash out at
prisoners, and some would just get by with the bare minimum, put in 12 hours and not really do much work.
I should also say that the company was not even filling the positions required by contract.
Later on, after I quit, I bought one share of the company so I could attend a corporate meeting and raise
some of these issues as a shareholder. I asked a question to the CoreCivics CEO, Damon Hininger, who
didn't acknowledge who I was, or that he knew who I was. He gave me a corporate-gloss answer about how
well the company was doing, and as soon as the meeting was over, he took off quickly.
Much of the history of making prisoners into profit machines is closely intertwined with slavery, and then
white supremacy after the Civil War. We know the justice system is full of racial disparities, but how much
was this in evidence during your daily life at the prison?
The culture in Louisiana prisons was different from California, where prisoners were much more racially
segregated. But about 75 percent of the prisoners at Winn were African-American, which is a clear
illustration of the way racism plays into the criminal justice system. There are just a huge number of black
people in prison, and Louisiana is one of the most incarcerated places in the world. The South, in general,
has staggering rates of incarceration.
As you detail in the book, from convict leasing to chain gangs, the reality of private prisons in America is
hardly unprecedented. What's different about the situation today?
The size is unprecedented. The issue of the prison system being driven by a desire to turn a profit is not at
all unprecedented; in fact, it's the driving force of the institution throughout much of American history.
There were times when states were debating whether they should keep using the penitentiary system. That
system didn't always exist - it was invented in America. Decades after it began, people were asking, "Is this
a failed experiment? People aren't being rehabilitated." What saved it is that states discovered a way to
make these places turn a profit and make money for them. Then they became addicted to the penitentiary.
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Southern states were using them as a way to try to industrialize, to compete with the North - before the Civil
War, prisons in many southern states were the state's largest factories. Even after the war, states leased
penitentiary systems to private companies, and became hooked on them because they were making money
for the state. Ten percent of Alabama's state's budget was coming from penitentiaries. But when you read
back through old papers and op-eds, you see the same issue still coming up: people saying "Why are we
continuing with this system that does not seem to be reducing crime or rehabilitating anyone?"
To state the obvious, many public prisons aren't exactly hotbeds of good treatment and behavior. Do you
think the problems you describe are specific to private institutions?
No, but it's only in recent decades that the profit motive has been separated from the public prison system -
before, they'd been intertwined. Now we have some private prisons, which are about 8 percent of the total,
but their distinction was much more fuzzy during most of American history. There were times when we had
corporations running prison systems, and other periods when the states were, because they were were intent
on turning a profit. That's not so much the case anymore, because of prison overpopulation.
Today, I wouldn't make any distinction between public and private in terms of the possibility of
rehabilitation - public prisons are also abysmal in that way. But there are certain conditions particular to
private prisons, which have to do with companies cutting corners, lowering wages of staff, and being
resistant to providing medical care. At the prison I was in, the contract said that if you had to send prisoners
to the hospital, the company would have to foot the bill. I saw many situations where prisoners had severe
medical conditions and the company wouldn't do it. One guy had gangrene, wasn't sent to the hospital, and
eventually had to have his legs amputated. It's not as if public prisons have great health care, but there's an
incentive to cut corners where they can, which almost always leads to worse conditions.
Do you think the profit motive automatically makes private prisons fatally flawed? Could there be such
thing as a humane, successful one?
No, because the margin of profit is so small. If private prisons were regulated in a way that made them more
humane and forced them to provide better health care, the profit margin would go away and the motive for
states to use the company would disappear. It's built into the system that they're going to be less humane.
Something that's worth noting here: the reason we have these private prison companies is that we have so
many people in prison. This is an issue that goes way beyond incarceration. This is about policing,
prosecutorial power, mandatory minimums, how long sentences are. These are the core issues, and the forprofit
prisons are the symptoms of those problems.
Even since you published your Mother Jones piece, the prison reform movement has gained steam in
America, with Trump's election of course being a setback to that progress. As you write in the book, reform
movements have ebbed and flowed throughout America's history. Do you feel the current movement has
real potential to change the way we think and act about prisons?
I do see potential. In recent years there has been a lot more attention paid to prisons than before, and I think
there is a wider understanding of the problems with them. Ten years ago, it was very hard to get anyone to
focus on the issue - the idea was that if people are in prison, they deserved it. That consciousness has
changed. There's an awareness on both the left and the right that we've gone in a bad direction and need to
change course. There are a few reasons for this: the Black Lives Matter movement has focused attention on
policing, and there's an increasing awareness about the racism in our criminal justice system.
Trump has definitely been a setback. A clear example of that is that weeks after my article came out, the
Obama administration announced that it would (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/postnation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/?
utm_term=.5296b6bbbfd3) stop using private prisons, and the stock prices of those companies tanked.
CoreCivics was cut in half. The day after Trump won, their stock price skyrocketed more than any company
in the stock market, and in the first few weeks of his administration, DOJ (https://www.theguardian.com/us-
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news/2017/feb/23/trump-revives-private-prison-program-doj-obama-administration-end) reversed the
Obama administration's decision. So he's rolled back those changes, but there's still opportunity to make
progress on the state level.
After four months of working at the prison, what was your biggest, overarching takeaway about the state of
incarceration in America?
There's so much to say. I think that the state of incarceration in America is dismal, to put it mildly. We have
the largest prison population in the entire world, a system so bloated that we've turned to companies to pick
up the slack, to run prisons where the states can't afford to.
It's an unprecedented situation in world history. When we look back on this time decades from now, I think
mass incarceration will be one of the defining issues of the moment we're in.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
To access, purchase, authenticate, or subscribe to the full-text of this article, please visit this link:
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Shane Bauer Talks Working Undercover in a Private Prison." Daily Intelligencer, 21 Sept. 2018. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A555114328/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1e16983c. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A555114328
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American Prison: A Reporter's
Undercover Journey into the Business of
Punishment
Emily Dziuban
Booklist.
114.22 (Aug. 1, 2018): p6.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment.
By Shane Bauer.
Sept. 2018. 368p. Penguin Press, $28 (9780735223585). 365.973.
Bauer's amazing book examines one of slavery's toxic legacies, using convicted people to make profit,
through a dual approach. The first is historical, tracing southern states' exploitation of the Thirteenth
Amendment, which abolished slavery and forced labor "except as punishment for a crime." Convicts could
be legally forced to labor, and a variety of sadistic tortures increased their productivity significantly over
"free" labor. This loophole incentivized the incarceration of large numbers of mostly African American
people. Convict labor leasing created much infrastructure in the South, popularized the chain gang, and
often led to convicts' deaths. Bauer's second approach details his personal account of the four months in
2014-15 during which he worked as a correctional officer in a Louisiana prison, earning $9 per hour, for the
Corrections Corporation of America. Frustrated with the lack of transparency and accountability in the forprofit
prison industry, Bauer went undercover in hope of obtaining accurate information. Bauer also
examines his own motivations, ethics, and behavior during this period and does not spare himself. In short,
he observes an acutely dangerous and out-of-control environment created by CCA's profit-driven
underpaying of staff and understaffing of prisons. Bauer's historical and journalistic work should be
required reading.--Emily Dziuban
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Dziuban, Emily. "American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment."
Booklist, 1 Aug. 2018, p. 6. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A550613015/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8299b2e4. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A550613015
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American Prison: A Reporter's
Undercover Journey into the Business of
Punishment
Publishers Weekly.
265.25 (June 18, 2018): p96.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment
Shane Bauer. Penguin Press, $28 (368p) ISBN 978-0-7352-2358-5
Deprivation, abuse, and fear oppress inmates and guards alike in this hard-hitting expose of the for-profit
prison industry. Mother Jones reporter Bauer, who wrote about being imprisoned in Iran for two years in A
Sliver of Light, hired on as a guard in 2014 at Louisiana's Winn Correctional Center, a private prison run by
Corrections Corporation of America (now CoreCivic). Equipped with a hidden camera and recorder, he
found a snake pit of exploited labor and substandard correctional services. Bauer and his fellow guards were
understaffed (sometimes three guards for a 352-prisoner unit), paid $9 an hour, poorly trained, and afraid of
inmates; prison management veered between chaotic laxness and brutal crackdowns. With a $34-per-dayperinmate
budget, the prison axed educational and recreational programs and fatally skimped on health care
(one inmate Bauer met lost both legs after officials failed to hospitalize him for an infection; another hanged
himself after his suicide threats were ignored). Bauer vividly depicts Winn's poisonous culture as he finds
himself succumbing to its mind-set of paranoid authoritarianism ("Striving to treat everyone as human takes
too much energy. More and more I focus on proving I won't back down"). In addition, he sets his reportage
in the context of a history of for-profit incarceration in the South that is rife with racism and torture. The
result is a gripping indictment of a bad business. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment." Publishers Weekly,
18 June 2018, p. 96. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A544712459/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=735fece2. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A544712459
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Bauer, Shane: AMERICAN PRISON
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bauer, Shane AMERICAN PRISON Penguin Press (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 9, 18 ISBN: 978-0-7352-
2358-5
A penetrating expose on the cruelty and mind-bending corruption of privately run prisons across the United
States, with a focus on the Winn facility in Louisiana.
That prison was operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, but after a shorter version of this book
appeared in Mother Jones, the company rebranded as CoreCivic and lost the Winn contract with the
government. Bauer (co-author: A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran, 2014), who has won
the National Magazine Award in addition to many others, spent four months inside the prison as a
corrections officer, carrying out an undercover journalism assignment to find the truth behind CCA's
documented record of lies about its practices. At least 8 percent of inmates in state prisons must adjust to
the practices of laxly regulated private companies rather than those in government-run facilities. At Winn,
correctional officers (a term they prefer to "guard") risk their safety every day for $9 per hour. Bauer
determined that the guards, most of them unarmed, were outnumbered by the inmates by a ratio as high as
200 to 1. The author had also viewed prison from a different perspective, having been incarcerated for two
years in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison because he had unwittingly crossed a border while hiking as a
tourist. Despite the awful conditions in his Iranian cell, Bauer found many of the conditions in Louisiana to
be even worse. Nearly every page of this tale contains examples of shocking inhumanity. During his four
months at Winn, Bauer also noticed a cruelty streak developing in his own character; even some of the
inmates told Bauer that he was changing, and not for the better. Interspersed with the chapters about Winn,
Bauer includes historical context--e.g., after the end of the Civil War, states continued slavery by a different
name, forcing prisoners to pick cotton and perform other grueling tasks that produced income for prison
administrations.
A potent, necessary broadside against incarceration in the U.S., which "imprisons a higher portion of its
population than any country in the world."
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bauer, Shane: AMERICAN PRISON." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A543008981/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ea8632bc.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A543008981
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Bauer, Shane: A SLIVER OF LIGHT
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 15, 2014):
COPYRIGHT 2014 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Bauer, Shane A SLIVER OF LIGHT Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00
3, 18 ISBN: 978-0-547-98553-4
The three American hikers imprisoned in Iran in 2009 alternate relaying their versions of their scary,
uncertain ordeal. Trekking up a mountain in northern Iraqi Kurdistanm, the three 20-something Americans
working in the Middle East as journalists and teachers wandered across the Iranian border and were thrown
into prison, suspected of espionage. The two young men, friends Bauer and Fattal, were held for two years.
Shourd, Bauer's fiancee, was released after a year, and she employed her notoriety to get the others out.
Indeed, they became convenient pawns in the ongoing political enmity between the United States and Iran,
used to apply pressure where needed in discussing sanctions and nuclear arsenals. In their well-developed
and detailed accounts, told in alternate first-person voices, the three remind the world how human,
vulnerable and terribly isolated they were during their months of incarceration, when they knew little of
what was going on in the outside world and existed day by day in an entrenched survival mode. Shuttled
around blindfolded, with Shourd wearing hijab, they started several hunger strikes at first when the guards
separated them and soon were transported to the dreaded Evin Prison in Tehran. Managing the guards was
key, as was learning to stand up for themselves in terms of the small liberties they were allowed, such as
spending a precious few hours together daily in the courtyard. Shourd endured solitary since she wasn't
allowed to mix with Iranians, while the two men roomed with each other and devised all kinds of mentalexercise
games-e.g., studying Morse code and memorizing poetry. As a Jew, Fattal became more religiously
observant in jail, and all three studied the Quran. All were critical of American government policy before
their incarceration and emerged from their ordeal unbowed and outspoken. An unsugared account that
demonstrates the admirable, unbreakable bond of friends, parents and countrymen.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bauer, Shane: A SLIVER OF LIGHT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2014. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A355395758/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4bab7581.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A355395758
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A Sliver of Light: Three Americans
Imprisoned in Iran
Steve Uhrich
Booklist.
110.11 (Feb. 1, 2014): p7.
COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran. By Shane Bauer and others. Mar. 2014. 336p.
Houghton, $27 (9780547985534). 365.9.
In this jointly authored memoir, three young, globetrotting journalists recount their two-year imprisonment
in Iran. Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd inadvertently hiked into unmarked Iranian territory where they
were arrested and taken to a prison to be interrogated. The book details how the three rebelled against
captivity by relying on one another for support and coordinating group hunger strikes. The trio describe
with forceful detail how, despite frequent moves between prisons, they developed intense and diverse
relationships with their captors. Even so, Iranian civil servants accused the three of entering Iran on behalf
of the CIA and Israel. Upon an unexpected release, Sarah used her newfound celebrity to recruit help to
secure the release of Shane and Josh, but this proved difficult and all the more pressing as Shane and Josh's
trial date loomed. This engaging story portrays the horrors of imprisonment and the danger that awaits any
intrepid traveler who becomes mired between the antipathy of two governments.--Steve Uhrich
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Uhrich, Steve. "A Sliver of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2014, p. 7.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A358698742/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8a1218e8. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A358698742
9/30/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Sliver Of Light: Three Americans
Imprisoned in Iran
Publishers Weekly.
260.50 (Dec. 9, 2013): p58.
COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Sliver Of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran
Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Eamon Dolan, $27 (336p) ISBN
978-0-547-98553-4
In the summer of 2009, three Americans hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan crossed (or were lured) over the border
into Iran and were imprisoned. Over the next two years, they suffered harsh interrogations, solitary
confinement, and demoralizing uncertainty as pawns in an international stare-down between the U.S. and
Iran. In their cells, the three friends struggled to maintain sanity and solidarity in the face of restricted
contact with the outside world. Although Should was released after 14 months in captivity, Bauer and Fattal
endured another year in Iran's notorious Evin prison. The narrative alternates between the perspectives of
the three prisoners. Although they each present their experience in the first person, the voices remain oddly
similar. Moments of humor and insight leave the reader wishing for more. Their prison time is a tightly
controlled, homogenized, and repetitious existence--down to their frequent stating of their opposition to
U.S. Middle-Eastern policy. At its best, the narrative captures the claustrophobic atmosphere of daily life in
prison, a life made even worse by their imperfect grasp of Persian. It's a testament to the willpower and
discipline of the three captives that they maintained their values and sense of justice through their long
ordeal. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Sliver Of Light: Three Americans Imprisoned in Iran." Publishers Weekly, 9 Dec. 2013, p. 58. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A354182813/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1ed61f55. Accessed 30 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A354182813