In the United States, libraries outnumber McDonald’s. Who would’ve thought that the hunger for a Big Mac would be topped by a hunger for knowledge? Maybe there is still hope for humanity. And prisoners are no different. Most of us crave knowledge. Being incarcerated means getting used to having things taken away, not having choices and having very little hand in decision-making. A good book can teach you, a good book can enlighten you. Any book, even a bad one, can make you think, and thoughts are about the only thing that the warden can’t figure out how to lock up. When I read, be it a novel or a work of nonfiction, it gets me out of my cell for a while. My body may be sitting on a cold, steel bunk in a six-foot-by-nine-foot concrete box, but my mind is floating down the Mississippi with Huck Finn, hurtling toward the moon with the first astronauts in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff or waiting for the waters to recede with Noah in the Ark. It’s a word most prisoners don’t like to say out loud in here, but books are an escape.

When he finds the prison library inadequate, an inmate takes matters into his own hands.