BOOKS

Hell Is a Very Small Place

Edited by Jean Casella, James Ridgeway, and Sarah Shourd

THE NEW PRESS

Reading this collection of essays by people who have experienced solitary confinement, it’s not hard to see why UN officials view solitary as a means of torture. The authors, current and former inmates, managed to retain their sanity, but they write of others who couldn’t—who, after days or weeks or years, began screaming and clawing at their cages, hurling feces at passersby, or mutilating themselves. Then there was “Mad Dog,”