John J. Lennon reviews Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 by Heather Ann Thompson for the Fall 2017 issue of The Hedgehog Review.
EXCERPT
The first time I heard about Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water, I was in the Attica Correctional Facility’s auditorium-chapel, attending a twelve-step meeting. A volunteer from the outside, who knew I was a prison journalist, told me about it. “This book is gonna be a big deal,” he said. “She’s naming the people behind the killing and the cover-up.”
He was right. Blood in the Water won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for history and a string of other awards. The buzz surrounding the book was huge. When I saw Thompson on my cell TV chatting with Tavis Smiley, I called down the tier for others to tune in. When Smiley asked Thompson about the current conditions in Attica, she told him they were just as bad as, if not worse than, they were back in the 1970s. Not so fast, I thought.
Read the full review at The Hedgehog Review.