America's Prisons, America's Past and Future

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Prisons for profit have been in the back pages of the news for decades but in 2016, Shane Bauer put it in headlines. In an article for Mother Jones, Bauer described going undercover as a $9 an hour guard at a private prison in rural Louisiana. With a pen doubling as an audio recorder inside and a camera hidden in his thermos, he began to document his disturbing workplace. Bauer never told Corrections Corporation of America what he was up to, but he didn’t alter his resume to conceal his job record as a journalist. At least in his case, the background check was perfunctory. CCA appeared willing to hire anyone willing to work a dull yet dangerous job for low pay.

With American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment (Penguin), Bauer expands his article into a book. He draws a picture of an ill-run institution that looks like a GOP CPA’s idea of a prison with every bean counted and every corner cut to maximize profit. Bauer finds that the roots of prisons for profit run deep in American history, including the convict-filled plantations of the post-slavery South. CCA’s cofounder, Terrell Don Hutto, was once a warden of one of those labor camps and conceptualized a way to cash in on the burgeoning prison population. Beginning in the 1980s, penitentiaries were suddenly faced with an unprecedented influx of inmates from the War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing. Suddenly, the U.S. had more prisoners than any “developed” nation and nowhere to put them. Enter CCA, which began by converting a motel into an immigration lock-up.

American Prison is a page-turner as well as a sad commentary on the State of the Union. CCA’s stock skyrocketed after the 2016 election.

African American Officers in Liberia: A Pestiferous Rotation, 1910-1942 (Potomac Books), by Brian G. Shellum

The U.S. had a special relationship with Liberia, the African nation founded by ex-American slaves that promptly established institutions mirroring the society from which they had been freed, including forced labor for the indigenous Africans they conquered. Military historian Brian Shellum doesn’t paint the full panorama but focuses on a sequence of events involving black U.S. Army officers—a rarity before World War II—delegated to advise and command Liberia’s military. The West African outpost of the Old South was menaced before World War I by France and Britain, which saw no gain in tolerating an independent African nation; was attacked by Germany during that war; engaged in brush wars with native tribes; and eventually fell into economic dependence on an American corporate giant, Firestone. African American Officers in Liberia is lively true story of black Americans given unusual responsibility at a time when civil rights was barely a dream.

The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (PublicAffairs), by Anna-Lisa Cox

An overlooked aspect of the Northwest Territory, the original “Old West” in American history (encompassing the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin), was the role of African Americans. Slavery was banned in the territory and free blacks were among the pioneers. Harvard fellow Anna-Lisa Cox focuses on black farmers and finds, among other surprises, 31 settlements in Wisconsin with black-owned farms in 1860. All was not well in the region—abolitionists and blacks were attacked by what today would be called white supremacists. Nonetheless, tens of thousands of African Americans migrated from the east to the territory, taking advantage of no slavery and cheap land. A few were elected to public office and had some success in promoting legislation curbing the effects of prejudice The situation worsened with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act (1950), which had the effect of making free blacks vulnerable to seizure by slavers. The Bone and Sinew of the Land is a valuable contribution toward understanding the complex history of race in America.

James Madison: Liberty’s Advocate (Wisconsin Historical Society Press), edited by John P. Kaminski

UW-Madison professor John Kaminski, an expert on America’s founders, has inaugurated a series of books that reflect on how those men were viewed by their contemporaries. The latest one collects comments on James Madison, gathered from letters, newspaper articles, speeches and even diaries. The scholarly Madison played an important role in devising the U.S. Constitution, especially its federal nature, and along with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, contributed to The Federalist, the essays that contain the document’s earliest interpretations. He ably assisted George Washington through his presidency, helped manage the first Congress and advocated for the Bill of Rights before becoming the nation’s fourth president. It was a remarkable life, and as some of the comments collected by Kaminski show, he was not universally liked. The book’s selection of Madison’s thoughts reveals ideas apposite today. “In a multitude of counsellors there is the best chance of honesty, if not wisdom,” he said. A ruler surrounded by yes men is a dangerous beast.

The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents (W.W. Norton), by Corey Brettschneider

Despite his book’s title, it’s pretty obvious who Brown University political science professor Corey Brettschneider had in mind when he wrote The Oath and the Office. For Brett, the presidential oath, its words prescribed in the U.S. Constitution, contains the whole of the law—the office holder’s “public contract with the American people.” Addressing presidents future (and present?), Brettschneider insists that it’s “crucial that you see the Constitution’s rules as legitimate constraints, not obstacles to get around.” A fan of James Madison (but not Alexander Hamilton), Brettschneider essentially argues for what once was considered a good conservative position—a president with limited powers. He adds, that “a populist president who claims that his personality reflects the desires of the people” does not have a mandate to ignore his oath to protect and defend the Constitution. The Oath and the Office is repetitive and 101 level, but then, so is our current office-holder-in-chief.

Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam (PublicAffairs), by Robert K. Brigham

As early as 1965, Henry Kissinger, critical of U.S. policy in Vietnam, began to formulate a solution based on the application of military force coupled with diplomacy. When Richard Nixon appointed him National Security Advisor, Kissinger put his plan in play. One of his insights involved cultivating Communist China, an idea that bore fruit. But Kissinger’s scheme to achieve “peace with honor” ended in an accord that gained release for U.S. POWs but provided America with only temporary cover for the embarrassment of defeat. Working with recently declassified documents, Vassar history professor Robert Brigham investigates his strategy and concludes that despite “his considerable intellect and talent,” Kissinger was never able to reach a peace agreement that secured the future of South Vietnam. He underestimated North Vietnam’s resilience in the face of American power, squandered public good will by escalating the war and failed to play Washington politics effectively. Reckless argues that Kissinger may have inherited a disaster, but in the end he only increased the damage.