Best for: Those looking for a quick introduction to prison abolition. In a nutshell: Scholar Angela Y. Davis provides, through six dense chapters, an overview of the problem with prison as the default response to crime, and urges us to consider alternatives. Line that sticks with me: “A description of supermaxes in a 1997 Human Rights Watch report sounds chillingly like Dicken’s description of Eastern State Penitentiary. What is different, however, is that all references to individual rehabilitation have disappeared.” Why I chose it: I’m […]