Author Description

A timeless biography! This compelling life history of Manny Torres is a rich source of data about prison life, the life of the addict, and the hopelessness and helplessness in prisons everywhere. Rettig's much-cited classic traces Manny's elaborate career of deviance, including all his friends and enemies from his days of committing street crimes and their experiences with the punishment/treatment continuum that is always an issue in American prisons. Rettig's account--which uses a sociological viewpoint to elucidate a variety of theories in deviance and criminology--is as informative today as it was decades ago.