God of the Rodeo: The Quest for Redemption in Louisiana's Angola Prison

U'm not usually a big fan of prison books, but Dan Bergner has written a page-turner that really gets to the soul of the men on either side of the bars, told like a terrific novelist. He also gets above the prison system, and shows what has gone wrong with how we punish our criminals--and does this like an excellent investigative reporter. Even when Bergner enters the story--he has to--his presence doesn't ring intrusive, like so many non-fiction books where the writer seems to think he or she should be the star of the book, not the subject and aren't labeling it as a memoir. Anyway, Bergner's voice is pitch-perfect as the story twists unexpectedly, and by the end the impossible had happened--I loved a prison book. Highly recommended.

This is an excellently writen book I would reccomend to anyone interested in prison life and the forces that compel one to live on despite a sentence of life behind bars.I recently visited Angola in October as a law student and found the place to be most intriguing. Mr. Bergner's account of everyhting I saw, including death row, is quite accurate. Also, his rendition of Louisiana politics is right on the mark. A really good read I would reccomend to anyone.

God of the Rodeo is an exceptional book. Its novelistic rendering of the gripping stories of men who will spend the rest of their lives in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison results in an unsentimental -- but extremely moving -- story of life behind bars. Without being pedantic or political, the book forces us to confront the fact that while we have a right as a society to incarcerate these men for the brutal crimes they have committed, we have a moral obligation not to ignore them. The book also offers fascinating portraits of ministers who are among the few willing to devote time and attention to caring about these men. Whatever your view of our criminal justice system, God of the Rodeo is an important book to read. Moreover, its excellent writing makes this book a pleasure to read as well.

"God of the Rodeo," by Daniel Bergner, 1998, is a great book, an excellent account of life incarcerating and being incarcerated in Louisiana's Angola penitentiary, a former slave plantation on which much has changed and much has not. The book is also about the struggle required in order to write such a book, a struggle that has recently been made much harder. Compare the following quotes. (1)"There are countries in which public establishments are considered by the government as its own personal affair, so that it admits persons to them only according to its pleasure, just as a proprietor refuses at his pleasure admission into his house; they are a sort of administrative sanctuaries, into which no profane person can penetrate. These establishments, on the contrary, in the United States, are considered as belonging to all. The prisons are open to everyone who chooses to inspect them ad every visiter may inform himself of the order which regulates the interior." - Gustave de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville, 1833 (2)"The United States Supreme Court, in a series of decisions going back to the 1970s, had helped to ensure that the nation's prisons stayed isolated and unknown, that criminals, once sent away, could be forgotten. . . . " . . . A recent federal law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, driven through Congress to ensure that incarceration not be too costly to the taxpayers or too joyful for the convicts, will likely free Angola from federal oversight within the coming months." - Daniel Bergner, 1998 Bergner handles, by his own account, many difficult situations with wisdom and grace. He proves his points and labels his speculations as such. He is neither cynical nor gullible. My one complaint is that he includes a passage toward the end (Chapter 15) in which he simultaneously preaches vengeance and quotes Jesus, apparently oblivious to the irony. Proclaiming any moral feat (in this case love of an enemy) impossible is always a moral disgrace. However great the majority of Americans who are unable to overcome the thirst for vengeance that Bergner attributes to all people, there is a minority being ignored, erased from the "natural" and "normal." This attitude is to blame for much of the horror depicted in Bergner's book. January 1999

I would never have bought this book for myself. I don't usually like books that are supposed to be "beautifully written" and poignant, and I don't like books that plug themselves with quotes from the likes of Sebastian ("The Quiet Storm") Junger. And, I especially don't like to read books by journalists who tells us that they have fallen in love with a misunderstood murderer but forget to tell us why their new buddy is locked away. In any event, I got the book as a gift and ran out of other stuff to read on a plane flight. So, I was stuck. Yikes, was I wrong about this book. It was terrific. I expected it to be soft and sentimental. It wasn't. It was gutsy and intense and gave you the harsh world of Angola Prison. Now, I'm passing the damn thing out as gifts to friends. By the way, a week after I finished the sucker, Larry King of all people pumps the thing in his USA Today column. He called it fascinating. Forget the junk on the book's back cover, King says it's a must read. So, read it!A final note: What's with that wierd review from the author's erstwhile friend? That guy should get himself a life.