Divided into two parts, this book is the first of two volumes which describe the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy from the Tracatus to his later writings. It presents the general and the particular within a relatively constant framework, thus making Wittgenstein's thought more accessible to students of philosophy and to non-specialists.

After over half a century of secrecy, a Swiss bank safe was opened, it contained the long-lost research notes of Josef Mengele, as well as those of his chief assistant in Auschwitz. They had been deposited there by the assistant who himself had been a Jewish doctor. Sent to Auschwitz, he was forced to participate in Josef Mengele’s gruesome human experiments. Following the war, he completely disappeared, assuming a new identity and shrouding himself in silence. He did write his story down, but ordered the documents to be sealed away until decades after his death. With the release date drawing closer, his granddaughter, a well-connected Vatican doctor, wanted to have the documents examined by a professional historian. Thus, a great investigation was launched to track him down and pin down his place in the medical system in Auschwitz and the horrendous medical experiments conducted there. However, after some time, doubts regarding the authenticity of the documents began to emerge. Thus, what promised to be a sensational historical breakthrough, soon turned into a criminal investigation into one of the greatest historical fraud attempts in recent decades. At the end of the second investigation, the person behind the forged documents was brought to trial and sentenced on 22 counts of fraud. This book thoroughly examines the way the fraud evolved over the span of three decades and how it succeeded in convincing so many people, while also comparing it to other historic hoaxes, particularly those concerning the Holocaust.

James Tillman was stretched out on his basement couch, relaxing after a long day of work at the car wash, the smell of sweet onions and simmering steak filling the air of his modest apartment in the projects of Hartford, Conn. His mother, a bible perched nearby, was softly singing a hymn when she was shaken by the thundering sound of pounding on the front door. It wasn’t a knock; it was an act of sheer force. In an instant, the police burst in, lifted James out of his home and shoved him into prison, arresting him for the brutal rape of a young corporate executive. For over 18 years, James professed his innocence, through the investigation, trial, appeals, and to anyone who would listen. Finally, after a series of extraordinary events, the Connecticut Innocence Project took up James’ case, eventually winning his freedom—the first person to be exonerated in the state through the use of DNA. This is an inspirational story about the power of conviction: the wrongful conviction that sent James Tillman to prison for over 18 years, and the power of his own conviction that helped him persevere, offer a transformational forgiveness and earn a redemption that is so valued he remarkably calls his experience in prison, “a gift.” "The Power of Conviction" is for people who are facing tough times. You will understand that you’re not alone, that things can be brutally bad and we can react poorly at times, but where there is love, there is always hope. How did James Tillman endure 18 years of hell in prison? What specific lessons can you learn about the transformational power of forgiveness, love and conviction? When faced with your own challenges in life, what will you choose?

“A devastating and infuriating book, more astonishing than any legal thriller by John Grisham” (The New York Times) about a young father who spent twenty-five years in prison for a crime he did not commit…and his eventual exoneration and return to life as a free man. On August 13, 1986, just one day after his thirty-second birthday, Michael Morton went to work at his usual time. By the end of the day, his wife Christine had been savagely bludgeoned to death in the couple’s bed—and the Williamson County Sherriff’s office in Texas wasted no time in pinning her murder on Michael, despite an absolute lack of physical evidence. Michael was swiftly sentenced to life in prison for a crime he had not committed. He mourned his wife from a prison cell. He lost all contact with their son. Life, as he knew it, was over. Drawing on his recollections, court transcripts, and more than 1,000 pages of personal journals he wrote in prison, Michael recounts the hidden police reports about an unidentified van parked near his house that were never pursued; the bandana with the killer’s DNA on it, that was never introduced in court; the call from a neighboring county reporting the attempted use of his wife’s credit card, which was never followed up on; and ultimately, how he battled his way through the darkness to become a free man once again. “Even for readers who may feel practically jaded about stories of injustice in Texas—even those who followed this case closely in the press—could do themselves a favor by picking up Michael Morton’s new memoir…It is extremely well-written [and] insightful” (The Austin Chronicle). Getting Life is an extraordinary story of unfathomable tragedy, grave injustice, and the strength and courage it takes to find forgiveness.

The public health expert and prison reform activist offers “meticulous analysis” on our criminal justice system and the plague of American incarceration (The Washington Post). An internationally recognized public health scholar, Ernest Drucker uses the tools of epidemiology to demonstrate that incarceration in the United States has become an epidemic—a plague upon our body politic. He argues that imprisonment, originally conceived as a response to the crimes of individuals, has become “mass incarceration”: a destabilizing force that damages the very social structures that prevent crime. Drucker tracks the phenomenon of mass incarceration using basic public health concepts—“incidence and prevalence,” “outbreaks,” “contagion,” “transmission,” “potential years of life lost.” The resulting analysis demonstrates that our unprecedented rates of incarceration have the contagious and self-perpetuating features of the plagues of previous centuries. Sure to provoke debate and shift the paradigm of how we think about punishment, A Plague of Prisons offers a novel perspective on criminal justice in twenty-first-century America. “How did America’s addiction to prisons and mass incarceration get its start and how did it spread from state to state? Of the many attempts to answer this question, none make as much sense as the explanation found in [this] book.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

The classic bestseller from a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist that tells the compelling true story of one man's fight for the right to legal counsel for every defendent. A history of the landmark case of Clarence Earl Gideon's fight for the right to legal counsel. Notes, table of cases, index. The classic backlist bestseller. More than 800,000 sold since its first pub date of 1964.

This is a history of the California prison movement from 1950 to 1980, focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area's San Quentin State Prison and highlighting the role that prison reading and writing played in the creation of radical inmate ideology in those years. The book begins with the Caryl Chessman years (1948-60) and closes with the trial of the San Quentin Six (1975-76) and the passage of California's Determinate Sentencing Law (1977). This was an extraordinary era in the California prisons, one that saw the emergence of a highly developed radical convict resistance movement inside prison walls. This inmate groundswell was fueled at times by remarkable individual prisoners, at other times by groups like the Black Muslims or the San Quentin chapter of the Black Panther Party. But most often resistance grew from much wider sources and in quiet corners: from dozens of political study groups throughout the prison; from an underground San Quentin newspaper; and from covert attempts to organize a prisoners' union. The book traces the rise and fall of the prisoners' movement, ending with the inevitably bloody confrontation between prisoners and the state and the subsequent prison administration crackdown. The author examines the efforts of prison staff to augment other methods of inmate management by attempting to modify convict ideology by means of "bibliotherapy" and communication control, and describes convict resistance to these attempts as control. He also discusses how Bay Area political activists became intensely involved in San Quentin and how such writings as Chessman's Cell 2455, Cleaver's Soul on Ice, and Jackson's Soledad Brother reached far beyond prison walls to influence opinion, events, and policy.

This study of the life and works of Evelyn Waugh traces the novelist's pursuit of his vocation and his long retreat from a world which he came to regard as a spiritual dungeon. Jeffrey Heath explores the paradoxical elements in Waugh's career: his quest for a refuge itself proved to be a prison and his devotion to the Augustan graces was accompanied by a lasting attraction to a Dionysiac age without restratint. The deep cleft in Waugh's nature imbued his art with the characteristic quirky complexity which has fascinated many readers, but it left him a choleric and melancholy man who never fully accepted his calling as a writer.

Release from prison is matter of increasing interest throughout Europe. On the one hand, arguments about the need to reduce prison numbers, as well the consistent findings that prisoners can be integrated into society more effectively if they are subject to a period of supervision in the community, have made early release policies attractive to governments and to academic commentators. On the other hand, there are concerns that early release may not be applied fairly to all prisoners. This book aims to meet the need for comparative information on release from prison across Europe and explores some of the key themes and issues. The body of the book focuses on country perspectives, providing an invaluable survey of the situation in a number of European countries. The introductory and concluding chapters place the comparative material in a broader perspective. They explain how release policy is related to wider questions about justice and fairness in prison-related decision-making and the changing place of imprisonment in European society.