BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr, by James Carr
James Carr may not have been the world’s most famous criminal, but he wrote one of the most memorable prison memoirs of the Boomer generation.
Incarcerated and “working” during the 50s-60s, Carr came up in the Prison system during the time of Attica, the Panthers, and race riots--that up-ended even his cloistered community.
Remarkable, unsparing, uncensored history of an observant “bad guy” whose collaborating writer on the outside really know how to make it click.
The narrative is downright harrowing, and it's chilling when, in the introduction, Isaac Cronin points out that little has changed in the California prison system, except that there is no longer very much of a prison reform movement.
BAD is still referred to by those who make a study of prison memoirs.
Narrated by JD Jackson who did great work on The Marines of Montford Point: America’s First Black Marines.
--Susie Bright