Escape from Alcatraz: The True Crime Classic

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Within this framework, the comics’ creators tell and illustrate compelling tales of the very human drive to be free, sometimes at any cost. Of course each time I answered a question broadly the questions got more specific so when I got home I logged on hoping there was a book for kids about the escape. Someone gives you a dangerous puzzle to solve, one that may kill you or someone else, and you're about to fail. In saying that though, it is still and interesting and compelling read about the rest of Alcatraz's history which goes back quite some time.

I like how descriptive the eyewitnesses are, from describing everything in the jail cells to how the three prisoners escaped. Finally, the author has investigated many ideas offered to prove or disprove that the men survived and escaped.Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law. The morning after Hurricane Leo rips through the town of Canaan, residents awaken to widespread destruction—power outages, downed branches, uprooted trees, broken windows and damaged roofs. The interesting facts about the inmates, the daily routine of the prison and the politics involved in the silence of the Bureau of Prisons about how it was operated are intriguing.

I’m much more on the rehabilitation than punishment side of the penal debate, so I’m broadly in concord with the points the author makes in his conclusion – about how the sheer brutality of Alcatraz meant it failed as a prison.No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. Enacting a complex escape plan, the trio broke free from the cellblock, made it undetected past patrolling guards, inflated homemade life vests and a raft, and set sail into a foggy history. In an era of larger-than-life gangsters, it’s not surprising that some of the earliest comic-book villains were modeled on hijackers, embezzlers, kidnappers, and bank robbers whose real-life counterparts were locked up on Alcatraz.