Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Letters for the Ages Behind Bars: Letters from History's Most Famous Prisoners

Letters for the Ages Behind Bars: Letters from History's Most Famous Prisoners

Aitken, Jonathan
Drake, James
Smyth, Edward

Hardcover

Series: Letters for the Ages

Historical FiguresLetters & EssaysGeneral World History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1399413899
ISBN13: 9781399413893
Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
Published: Jul 16 2024
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.19
Height: 1.18 Width: 6.35 Depth: 9.27
Language: English

Letters for the Ages Behind Bars is a history of imprisonment told through the letters of people incarcerated over many centuries, for crimes committed or sometimes even for no reason at all. It is a story that runs from St Paul right up to the present day.

The act of depriving someone of their liberty is one of humankind's most enduring responses to 'crime' through history. What society has sought to achieve over the years by doing so has shifted across the centuries and there is now a variety of purposes: to express disapproval; for the purpose of straight-up punishment through the removal of freedom; to protect the general public; to rehabilitate, perhaps even to forget about those with whom we simply cannot cope.

The letters assembled here come from all parts of the world, and from time immemorial: Thomas Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots, Eamon De Valera, Al Capone, Martin Luther King and many more.

These letters not only reveal what it is like to be behind bars, but raise issues that are still of pressing interest for us today - such as the death penalty, miscarriages of justice, redemption and social change. They shed light on a system which is primarily one of contradictions - there are letters which inspire, horrify, letters which awe and condemn - even letters which make you laugh or cry.

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