Coxsackie: The Life and Death of Prison Reform by Joseph F. Spillane

Abstract

Historians working in numerous fields will find Spillane’s book of value. Historians of prisons will find his case study of Coxsackie and its relationship to the beginnings of mass incarceration in the late twentieth-century United States of interest. Likewise, historians of drugs will find Spillane’s analysis of the postwar heroin epidemic of significance. Similarly, historians of reform and public policy will appreciate Spillane’s nuanced analysis. Spillane’s Coxsackie will also be a welcome addition to twentieth-century US history classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level.