Walter McGraw

Since I started focusing on books about the paranormal I've been looking for a well written book that is more a discussion of the search for the truth more than simply a collection of stories. So far, the search has been difficult, as most books on paranormal subjects are more about sharing the stories and letting the reader interpret their own conclusions. Finally, I've found what I was looking for.

This little, unassuming book I picked up at my local library sale. I assumed it would be like the others, nothing more than a collection of interesting tales presented as entertainment. Instead, journalist Walter McGraw, who hosted a radio show on the paranormal and sought out as many answers as he could, takes us on a well researched and reasoned investigation of the paranormal. The field of parapsychology is searching for its "white crow," and McGraw shares the stories and events that he has investigated over the years, along with the thoughts and conclusions of experts in the field from groups such as the Society for Psychical Research and Dr. J.B. Rhine of Duke University.

If you're interested in the search for answers when it comes to the paranormal, you absolutely must read this book.… (meer)

I picked this book up while on the Community and resistance tour with Floodlines author Jordan Flaherty and journalist/organizer Jesse Muhammad. I tried to bet Jordan a meal that the book, published in 1954, would have nothing about women's prison riots in it. He wisely declined the bet.

In 1954, the same year that the book was published, women at the NC Women's Prison rioted after prison staff killed 18-year-old Black woman Eleanor Rush. Their riot caused the State Prisons Department to issue an independent investigation into the cause of Rush's death (instead of accepting the prison's explanation that Rush, while bound and gagged by prison authorities for the crime of demanding to be fed after 16 hours without food, had committed suicide), ban the use of gagging and the "iron claw" and replace the existing warden with a woman from a women's social services (instead of a penal) background. The riot made news for weeks and weeks, first because of the riot itself, then the probe, the testimony of the rioters and finally the results (which spanned a few weeks of headlines).

Assignment: Prison Riots looks at male prisons and the causes of their riots. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it recommends that states put more money into the prison systems for programming, better paid and better-trained staff, etc. Half a century later, we can see how that has turned out. But the last chapter, when the assignment is complete, gives an indication of how media blackouts about prison conditions have happened (and probably still do happen. How many have read about the 2011 prisoner hunger strike in California? At its height over 12,000 prisoners participated, yet how many radio programs, newspapers, on-line media, etc, covered it?)… (meer)