This was an outstanding book, very, very much worth your time. I have been fairly critical in my star ratings because I think that it could’ve been much much more. I have recently reread, “and the band played on” about the. HIV epidemic in the 1980s. That book did a masterful job interweaving histories, both oral and written about the entire epidemic. The Rikers book missed an opportunity here to tell a more cohesive narrative. Instead of seeking a through line and using witnesses to tell an overall tale of Rikers, they have chosen to use thematic groupings of interviews. This method has produced a powerful, but disjointed tale of a troubled and absolutely terrifying institution. I think that the disjointed nature of detail, however, takes away from its overall power. I learned a lot about Rikers and about institutional racism and about the prison system in New York City from this book. That was my goal, and mission very well accomplished. I would love to see this book, integrated into a larger work of reportage, that tells, and even deeper and truer tale about Raiker’s, about it’s inmates, about it’s jailers, and about the people in City Hall, who appear to give very little importance to the way that we treat our prisoners. Overall, an outstanding book that could’ve been so much more.