Acclaimed journalist Ted Conover sets a new standard for bold, in-depth reporting in this first-hand account of life inside the penal system at Sing Sing.
When Ted Conover s request to shadow a recruit at the New York State Corrections Officer Academy was denied, he decided to apply for a job as a prison officer himself. The result is an unprecedented work of eyewitness journalism: the account of Conover's year-long passage into storied Sing Sing prison as a rookie guard, or "newjack."
As he struggles to become a good officer, Conover angers inmates, dodges blows, and attempts, in...

In Ted Conover's first book, now back in print, he enters a segment of humanity outside society and reports back on a world few of us would chose to enter but about which we are all curious.
Hoboes fascinated Conover, but he had only encountered them in literature and folksongs. So, he decided to take a year off and ride the rails. Equipped with rummage-store clothing, a bedroll, and a few other belongings, he hops a freight train in St. Louis, becoming a tramp in order to discover their peculiar culture. The men and women he meets along the way are by turns generous and mistrusting,...

To discover what becomes of Mexicans who come illegally to the United States, Conover disguised himself as an illegal alien, traveling and working across America for more than a year. This is the chronicle of his journey.
Ted Conover lived the bizarre life of the Mexican illegals. Theirs is a sub-terrestrial world of high-wire tensions, of brutal police, of sinister smugglers . . . A devastating document, this one must be read. Leon Uris"

Irreverent, poignant, and revealing, this meditation on the sweet temptation of wealth and the vainglorious quest for paradise as they exist in Aspen, Colorado, features a "cast of characters (that) includes such barn-size satirical targets as exclusive health clubs, over-the-hill drug dealers and movie stars and rock stars of wattages bright and dim" (The New Republic).

Journalism in the twentieth century was marked by the rise of literary journalism. Sims traces more than a century of its history, examining the cultural connections, competing journalistic schools of thought, and innovative writers that have given literary journalism its power. Seminal exmples of the genre provide ample context and background for the study of this style of journalism.

From the Pulitzer Prize finalist and National Book Critics Circle Award winning author of Newjack, an absorbing book about roads and their power to change the world.
Roads bind our world metaphorically and literally transforming landscapes and the lives of the people who inhabit them. Roads have unparalleled power to impact communities, unite worlds and sunder them, and reveal the hopes and fears of those who travel them.
With his marvelous eye for detail and his contagious enthusiasm, Ted Conover explores six of these key byways worldwide. In Peru, he traces the...

After he was denied access to report on Sing Sing prison, journalist Ted Conover applied to become a prison guard. He spent a year in the unpredictable, intimidating and often violent world of Americas penal system. 'Newjack' takes the reader as close to experiencing life in an American prison as anyone would ever want to get.

Over three and a half decades, Ted Conover has ridden the rails with hoboes, crossed the border with Mexican immigrants, guarded prisoners in Sing Sing, and inspected meat for the USDA. His books and articles chronicling these experiences, including the award-winning Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, have made him one of the premier practitioners of immersion reporting.

In immersion reporting--a literary cousin to ethnography, travel writing, and memoir--the writer fully steps into a new world or culture, participating in its trials, rites, and rituals as a member of the group. The end...