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Kaminski, Marek M
by Games Prisoners Play: The Tragicomic Worlds of Polish Prison
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- See description
- ISBN 10
- 0691117217
- ISBN 13
- 9780691117218
- Seller
-
San Francisco, California, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Princeton. 2004. Princeton University Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0691117217. 248 pages. hardcover. keywords: Sociology Prison. FROM THE PUBLISHER - On March 11, 1985, a van was pulled over in Warsaw for a routine traffic check that turned out to be anything but routine. Inside was Marek Kaminski, a Warsaw University student who also ran an underground press for Solidarity. The police discovered illegal books in the vehicle, and in a matter of hours five secret police escorted Kaminski to jail. A sociology and mathematics major one day, Kaminski was the next a political prisoner trying to adjust to a bizarre and dangerous new world. This remarkable book represents his attempts to understand that world. As a coping strategy until he won his freedom half a year later by faking serious illness, Kaminski took clandestine notes on prison subculture. Much later, he discovered the key to unlocking that culture - game theory. Prison first appeared an irrational world of unpredictable violence and arbitrary codes of conduct. But as Kaminski shows in riveting detail, prisoners, to survive and prosper, have to master strategic decision-making. A clever move can shorten a sentence; a bad decision can lead to rape, beating, or social isolation. Much of the confusion in interpreting prison behavior, he argues, arises from a failure to understand that inmates are driven not by pathological emotion but by predictable and rational calculations. Kaminski presents unsparing accounts of initiation rituals, secret codes, caste structures, prison sex, self-injuries, and of the humor that makes this brutal world more bearable. This is a work of unusual power, originality, and eloquence, with implications for understanding human behavior far beyond the walls of one Polish prison. inventory #34947 ISBN: 0691117217.
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Details
- Seller
- Zeno's (US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 34947
- Title
- Kaminski, Marek M
- Author
- Games Prisoners Play: The Tragicomic Worlds of Polish Prison
- Book Condition
- Used
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0691117217
- ISBN 13
- 9780691117218
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Place of Publication
- Princeton, Nj
- This edition first published
- May 10, 2004
Terms of Sale
Zeno's
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About the Seller
Zeno's
Biblio member since 2004
San Francisco, California
About Zeno's
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