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- Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
- Publisher: Ballantine Books
- On Sale: October 5, 1999
- Price: $19.00
- ISBN: 978-0-345-43553-8 (0-345-43553-2)
about this book
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
God of the Rodeo, by journalist Daniel Bergner, takes readers inside a world where no writer before has ventured so deeply–the life of a maximum-security state penitentiary. Bergner first traveled to Angola State Prison in Louisiana to cover the prison’s inmate rodeo, a singularly gruesome 32-year-old tradition. In the process he became drawn into the life of this notorious prison, battled its corrupt warden in court, and spent an entire year within its walls. With unparalleled access to the prisoners, Bergner created in God of the Rodeo, a “brave and bracing read.” Through his brilliantly wrought, highly dramatic account of seven inmates and their warden, Bergner shows us what it means to spend a life behind bars, and why we should care about the close to 2 million people who are incarcerated in this country.
“God of the Rodeo is an eloquent and valuable book. Bergner deserves credit for bringing such passion and intelligence to this story, and for fighting a legal battle to tell it at a time when 1.7 million people are behind bars in the United States and prisons exercise almost total control over what outsiders see of their lives.... Bergner’s rich, probing, and compassionate book is a rare look at both the physical and spiritual world on the other side of the bars.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Bergner does the near impossible: he creates empathy for the prisoners yet never allows the reader to lose sight of the reasons for their incarceration... A very powerful and beautifully written book.”—Booklist (American Library Association)
