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An American Radical: A Political Prisoner in My Own Country Paperback – Bargain Price, March 1, 2011


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Product Details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Citadel (March 1, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0806533048
  • ASIN: B005IUOQ8Y
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #614,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

A passionate 1960s-era protester whose radical beliefs were honed in the antiwar and black liberation movements of the time, Rosenberg was a proponent, if not an actual perpetrator, of violence in the name of antiestablishment causes. Placed on the FBI�s most-wanted list in 1982 for her role in a notorious crime in which two policemen were killed, Rosenberg went underground. Two years later, she was apprehended in the act of transporting a cache of explosives across state lines. The trial was swift, the sentence severe: 58 years in maximum security. In stark and searing prose, Rosenberg chronicles her hellish journey through the American prison system during a 16-year period in which she was brutalized, demoralized, and subjected to the most heinous treatment the country�s judicial system had to offer. Eventually pardoned by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office, Rosenberg credits her ability to survive to an indomitable sense of self, one that was sharpened by degrading horror. Not easy to read but important to encounter. --Carol Haggas

Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful By Lu on April 30, 2011
Format: Paperback
One of the rawest accounts of the prison system I've ever read. There isn't a lot of extra flourish to this book. Rosenberg doesn't share many tales of the youthful hope for revolution that characterized her coming of age in the 1960s and 70s, nor does she spend long giving a background on the civil rights movement with which she became involved. I think she assumes that we, as readers, have some basic understanding of the atmosphere of the time, given a few basic details, and she's right. What shines through in this narrative is an unerringly profound look at daily life under oppression, with absolutely no "fluff." Rosenberg makes it painfully and unsentimentally clear that what allowed her to survive her years in prison was her empathetic nature, a nature that allowed her to focus outside of herself. Her gains may be small and occasional, but she nonetheless helps her fellow prisoners win some measure of dignity.

There are many instances when Rosenberg could have described in more detail the bizarre realities of incarceration, or, on the other hand, she could have given a lengthy apology for her own actions. But she rarely indulges either extreme. This memoir is illuminated by a Ms. Rosenberg's quiet dignity, unnerving insight, and, surprisingly, a sweet vein of hope. Clear-eyed and profound, it is not easily forgotten.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful By RedBeard on July 20, 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Rosenberg, at thousands of junctures in her captivity, throws her spirit against the gears of the prison industrial complex. A must read to cultivate American awareness of what is happening to itself.

This is not left or right, this is you and me. Currently, over 7.2 million people are in prison, on probation, or on parole. This means roughly 1 in every 32 Americans are held by the justice system. The mechanism is exposed as incongruous to it's stated purpose:

"The Federal Bureau of Prisons protects society by confining offenders in the controlled environments of prisons and community-based facilities that are safe, humane, cost-efficient, and appropriately secure, and that provide work and other self-improvement opportunities to assist offenders in becoming law-abiding citizens."

It is clear that the statement would more truthfully read:

"The Federal Bureau of Prisons corrupts society by restricting citizens (and some real criminals) to diminutive holding compartments that depreciate health, brutalize people, cost untold billions, eviscerate basic freedoms, and provide menial labor and other psychological diversions to ensure nominal occasions for self-improvement, with the result of an increased recidivism rate that assists in maintenance and development of more jobs for the BOP and justice system while suppressing reproach by elected officials and American citizens."

This book is a critical asset to the correction of our "corrections" system.
This is a study in humanity, introspection, and perseverance, against which the machine was prevented from working.

A story of survival. It is indelible.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful By Adam Aronson on September 9, 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
An American Radical stands out for me for several reason. Previously, I was not familiar with the current state of prisons, or of the degrees to which security is enforced. Coming from Louisiana with stories of Angola, then moving past so many institutions here in New York (Rikers, Sing Sing, Brooklyn and Manhattan Central Detentions to name a few) it's much clearer how much farther the justice system stretches. It's tragic to hear of California's overcrowding, and how little the system does to ameliorate the situation. The effort toward stopping recidivism should be so much greater.

There's clearly a wholly different story at heart of the politics involved with Ms. Rosenberg's actions. Having grown up after that time it was a good primer on some of the ideologies, and it leaves much to be learned.
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20 of 29 people found the following review helpful By Mike in DC on March 3, 2011
Format: Paperback
Political prisoners aren't just in North Korea or China. They're right here in the United States, and former political prisoner Susan Rosenberg was lucky enough to be released from the system to tell her jarring, yet eloquent and introspective story.

Even if you disagree with her actions -- which I do, and which Rosenberg herself came to reject -- you should still be alarmed by the U.S.'s attempts to indefinitely imprison Rosenberg not for her actions, but for her ideas and associations. Keep in mind that she was arrested for stockpiling arms and explosives in anticipation of a "revolution" that she and her radical friends deluded themselves into thinking was inevitable. Compare that to the Tea Party "patriots" of today who started buying up guns and ammo in record numbers after Obama's election.

Rosenberg describes what life is like on the inside after the key is thrown away. We see a stark and unaccountable prison system for political prisoners designed to be invisible from both the public and their politicians. We see the poor and disenfranchised who inhabit the general population, at most dimly aware of the political inmates living in the basements or far-flung wings of the same institution. We see health care doled out as a privilege instead of a right. And we see how petty prison bureaucrats play with -- and sometimes devastate -- the lives of the people they've been given absolute power over.

In short, we see what America does with its citizens when no one's looking. In addition, Rosenberg describes her move away from the "groupthink" that got her into prison and her evolution toward a philosophy of peaceful change, so it's a story of personal transformation as well as an expose of government abuses.

This is a powerful story told in quiet and moving prose. I recommend it for anyone interested in American politics, prisons, or simply as a remarkable personal story.
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