Spiritual journey, as moving as it is inspiring.

The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker Reprinted from The Catholic Worker newspaper, May 2019, 86th Anniversary Issue The aim of the Catholic Worker movement is to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ. Our sources are the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as handed down in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, with our inspiration coming from the lives of the saints, "men and women outstanding in holiness, living witnesses to Your unchanging love." (Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer for holy men and women) This aim requires us to begin living in a different way. We recall the words of our founders, Dorothy Day who said, "God meant things to be much easier than we have made them," and Peter Maurin who wanted to build a society "where it is easier for people to be good."

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America. “[A] harrowing [portrait] of life behind bars . . . part confession, part jeremiad, part lamentation, part picaresque novel (reminiscent, at times, of Dickens and Defoe).”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the memoir of Austin Reed, a free black man born in the 1820s who spent most of his early life ricocheting between forced labor in prison and forced labor as an indentured servant. Lost for more than one hundred and fifty years, the handwritten document is the first known prison memoir written by an African American. Corroborated by prison records and other documentary sources, Reed’s text gives a gripping first-person account of an antebellum Northern life lived outside slavery that nonetheless bore, in its day-to-day details, unsettling resemblances to that very institution. Now, for the first time, we can hear Austin Reed’s story as he meant to tell it. He was born to a middle-class black family in the boomtown of Rochester, New York, but when his father died, his mother struggled to make ends meet. Still a child, Reed was placed as an indentured servant to a nearby family of white farmers near Rochester. He was caught attempting to set fire to a building and sentenced to ten years at Manhattan’s brutal House of Refuge, an early juvenile reformatory that would soon become known for beatings and forced labor. Seven years later, Reed found himself at New York’s infamous Auburn State Prison. It was there that he finished writing this memoir, which explores America’s first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate’s point of view, recalling the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places and excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage that extended beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South, into free New York. Accompanied by fascinating historical documents (including a series of poignant letters written by Reed near the end of his life), The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a work of uncommon beauty that tells a story of nineteenth-century racism, violence, labor, and captivity in a proud, defiant voice. Reed’s memoir illuminates his own life and times—as well as ours today. Praise for The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict “One of the most fascinating and important memoirs ever produced in the United States.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, The Washington Post “Remarkable . . . triumphantly defiant . . . The book’s greatest value lies in the gap it fills.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Reed displays virtuosic gifts for narrative that, a century and a half later, earn and hold the reader’s ear.”—Thomas Chatterton Williams, San Francisco Chronicle “[The book’s] urgency and relevance remain undiminished. . . . This exemplary edition recovers history without permanently trapping it in one interpretation.”—The Guardian “A sensational, novelistic telling of an eventful life.”—The Paris Review “Vivid and painful.”—NPR “Lyrical and graceful in one sentence, burning with fury and hellfire in the next.”—Columbus Free Press

In It's Jail Not Yale, former prisoner Corey Henderson talks straight about how police, prosecutors, judges and sometimes your own defense attorney collude to entrap and incarcerate. He then gives strategies you can use to avoid self-incrimination, detect and defend against unscrupulous defense attorneys, avoid or minimize your sentence and more. The second half of the book is devoted to emphasizing the rules you must follow to survive prison. Corey Henderson was an industrious middle-class well-educated young man. He owned a profitable business, had a good paying job and had just been accepted to a prestigious doctorate program. Then someone accused him of a crime. He would eventually spend four and a half years in a high security prison. Here he shares on-the-street insights about the legal system and the and the incarceration machine (once you're accused, you lose).

Dr. Herron Keyon Gaston examines the intersectionality of race, gender and class in American society and the ways in which one's status and privilege serves to impede or advance one's progress based on one's ontological and phonotypical makeup. The crux of this book is to chronicle Dr. Gaston's incarceration experience and to shed light on the grueling judicial process. The book details Dr. Gaston's nine-month stint in the criminal justice system in Florida after being falsely accused of sexual assault, and the impact this experience has had on his life. Dr. Gaston speaks candidly about how his incarceration experience and the blistering repercussions of his arrest have served as a roadblock to securing a plethora of personal and professional opportunities. Despite the insurmountable challenges formally incarcerated individuals face, Dr. Gaston demonstrates to readers that, with hope and resilience, one does not have to be defined by one's circumstances--but rather one's commitment to picking up the pieces and to keep moving forward. About the Author Author Dr. Herron Keyon Gaston is an American public intellectual, theologian, political activist, social critic, author, lecturer, pastor and an Ivy League university administrator. A product of the Deep South, Dr. Gaston has witnessed firsthand racial disparities and the disparate treatment people of color often experience within the criminal justice system and our broader society.

Pacifists who fought against the Second World War faced insurmountable odds—but their resistance, philosophy, and strategies fostered a tradition of activism that shaped America right up to the present day. In this provocative and deeply researched work of history, Akst takes readers into the wild, heady, and uncertain times of America on the brink of a world war, following four fascinating resisters -- four figures who would subsequently become famous political thinkers and activists -- and their daring exploits: David Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Dwight MacDonald, and Bayard Rustin. The lives of these diverse anti-war advocates--a principled and passionate seminary student, a Catholic anarchist, a high-brow intellectual leftist, and an African-American pacifist and agitator--create the perfect prism through which to see World War II from a new angle, that of the opposition, as well as to show how great and lasting their achievements were. The resisters did not stop the war, of course, but their impact would be felt for decades. Many of them went on to lead the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the two most important social stands of the second half of the twentieth century. The various World War II resisters pioneered non-violent protest in America, popularized Gandhian principles, and desegregated the first prison mess halls. Theirs is a story that has never been told.

A biography of a young African-American man who escaped the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets when he returned home.