TIME-LIFE Great Prison Escapes


Book Description

TIME-LIFE presents Great Prisons Escapes: Thrilling Tales of How they Got Away. Includes the true story behind the Papillon legend, the story for Tupac's godmother, and the real con artist of Catch Me If You Can.




Prison Break - True Stories of the World's Greatest Escapes


Book Description

These men for whom there is little else that life has to offer, little or nothing to lose; these are men who are at the limits; these are men who might walk on hot coals without burning their feet.' In the folklore of World War II, the memory of those heroes who staged 'Great Escapes' from PoW camps still endures. But what of the other side of the coin: the audacious and daring breakouts of gangsters and villains today? The focus of Prison Break is one these 'Great Escapes' from civilian prisons, whether the escape is planned or opportunistic, aided from within by corrupt guards or facilitated by a violent gang of intruders. We travel with out subjects as they go over walls, tunnel out, or are lifted from the exercise yard into the skies. The exploits of such legendary Houdini type figures as the 18th Century rogue Jack Sheppard and the Canadian serial escaper Wayne Carlson are recounted alongside tales of breakouts from seemingly unassailable jails; Alcatraz, Northern Ireland's Maze prison, and the Bangkok Hilton.




Escape from Dannemora


Book Description

It was one of the biggest crime stories of the decade - two deadly killers, desperate and on the run. After months of planning, Ricky Matt and David Sweat cut, chopped, coerced, and connived their way out of a maximum-security prison in the wilderness of upstate New York and managed to elude police for three weeks, sending the region into lockdown and keeping the entire country on edge. The media called it "a bold escape for the ages," and veteran true-crime writer Michael Benson leads us along the story's every wild path to dig out a tale of adventure, psychology, sex, and brutality. Escape from Dannemora examines the strange case of Joyce Mitchell, the long-time prison employee who had a sexual relationship with at least one of the killers, and who smuggled them tools and aided in the escape, while they cooked up a plan to kill her husband. In the end, Benson looks closely at conditions at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY, a crumbling Gothic pile now under investigation for charges of drug trafficking and brutality.




The Great Desert Escape


Book Description

Dramatic, highly readable, and painstakingly researched, The Great Desert Escape brings to light a little-known escape by 25 determined German sailors from an American prisoner-of-war camp. The disciplined Germans tunneled unnoticed through rock-hard, sunbaked soil and crossed the unforgiving Arizona desert. They were heading for Mexico, where there were sympathizers who could help them return to the Fatherland. It was the only large-scale domestic escape by foreign prisoners in US history. Wrung from contemporary newspaper articles, interviews, and first-person accounts from escapees and the law enforcement officers who pursued them, The Great Desert Escape brings history to life. At the US Army’s prisoner-of-war camp at Papago Park just outside of Phoenix, life was, at the best of times, uneasy for the German Kreigsmariners. On the outside of their prison fences were Americans who wanted nothing more than to see them die slow deaths for their perceived roles in killing fathers and brothers in Europe. Many of these German prisoners had heard rumors of execution for those who escaped. On the inside were rabid Nazis determined to get home and continue the fight. At Papago Park in March 1944, a newly arrived prisoner who was believed to have divulged classified information to the Americans was murdered—hung in one of the barracks by seven of his fellow prisoners. The prisoners of war dug a tunnel 6 feet deep and 178 feet long, finishing in December 1944. Once free of the camp, the 25 Germans scattered. The cold and rainy weather caused several of the escapees to turn themselves in. One attempted to hitchhike his way into Phoenix, his accent betraying him. Others lived like coyotes among the rocks and caves overlooking Papago Park. All the while, the escapees were pursued by soldiers, federal agents, police and Native American trackers determined to stop them from reaching Mexico and freedom.




The Greatest Japanese Prison Escape : Yoshie Shiratori


Book Description

Yoshie Shiratori, aka the Prison Break Magician, was born on July 31, 1907 in Aomori, Japan. He is best known for having an escape from prison four times. Yoshie Shiratori is Japan's own Harry Houdini, and not even handcuffs, copper walls, or dislocated shoulder could stop his daring escapes. This book has 5 chapters each dedicated to Yoshie Shiratori's different escape plans. Yoshie Shiratori is superhuman with immense strength he had suffered from extreme cold weather of japan to specially made solitary confinement for him.Chapter 1: Lockpick Method.Aomori, Japan, 1936, prisoner Yoshie Shiratori had enough he was forced to confess to a murder he did not commit. Falsely imprisoned in Aomori Prison, where he was beaten and tortured every night by prison guards, and now worse, prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.In his mind, it was time to go, but Aomori Prison wasn't the easiest to escape. Regardless, Yoshie Shiratori had nothing to lose. And so at 5:30 a.m., he made his move he knew there would be a 15-minute gap in the patrol time, as he had studied the guards' routine for months. And when the coast was clear, he pulled out a metal wire which he had smuggled in from the bathhouse and started to pick the lock.This was originally the metal support ring that was wrapped around the bathing buckets inmates use to wash themselves. His hands were stiff from the wintry cold but after a few minutes of picking, he had success, and his cell door swung open. But he wasn't out of the woods yet because there were more locked doors ahead.He knew he only had a few minutes left before the guards would return, and so he wasted no time attempting to pick his way through the remaining security doors. Now fortunately for him, he was able to make it out of the facility. But, the bad news was that he was only halfway to freedom. You see, he was still well within the search perimeter, which meant at any moment the alarm could go off and he'd still be caught.At 5:45 a.m. the guards returned, peering into his cell and this is what they saw, Shiratori sound asleep in his futon bed. But of course, what they didn't realize was that they were looking at something else, a pile of loose floorboards underneath his duvet designed to trick them.It wasn't until the next morning that they finally discovered the truth, and the alarm was sounded. But by then Shiratori was long gone. Now he had escaped.But things aren't always as they seem. In fact, for Yoshie Shiratori, aka the Prison Break Magician, this was only the beginning.Three days later he was caught trying to steal supplies from a hospital and just like that, he was back in the slammer.But this time for his escape attempt he was sentenced to life in prison. He would never be with his family again - his wife and his daughter. And all the months of planning had led to just three days of freedom, and now it seemed he'd be locked up for a very long time.Six years later, in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War, Shiratori found himself transferred to Akita Prison in Akita City. There the guards treated him even worse than in Aomori they had heard aboutShiratori's previous escape and were determined to make an example out of him they wanted to make sure he would never escape again.Along with the usual beatings, he was forced to partake in extreme manual labor, made to sleep on the hard concrete floor in the severe winter cold, and placed into solitary confinement for extended periods of time.Now, this was a specially-made solitary confinement cell that was very small and had a very high ceiling, with the walls covered with copper sheets so smooth that it was impossible to grip.In addition, there was almost no sunlight even in the daytime, with the only window light coming from a small sealed skylight high above.................................................




The Great Escape


Book Description

A Nobel Prize–winning economist tells the remarkable story of how the world has grown healthier, wealthier, but also more unequal over the past two and half centuries The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations. In The Great Escape, Nobel Prize–winning economist Angus Deaton—one of the foremost experts on economic development and on poverty—tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress, opening up gaps and setting the stage for today's disproportionately unequal world. Deaton takes an in-depth look at the historical and ongoing patterns behind the health and wealth of nations, and addresses what needs to be done to help those left behind. Deaton describes vast innovations and wrenching setbacks: the successes of antibiotics, pest control, vaccinations, and clean water on the one hand, and disastrous famines and the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the other. He examines the United States, a nation that has prospered but is today experiencing slower growth and increasing inequality. He also considers how economic growth in India and China has improved the lives of more than a billion people. Deaton argues that international aid has been ineffective and even harmful. He suggests alternative efforts—including reforming incentives to drug companies and lifting trade restrictions—that will allow the developing world to bring about its own Great Escape. Demonstrating how changes in health and living standards have transformed our lives, The Great Escape is a powerful guide to addressing the well-being of all nations.




The Most Dangerous Man in America


Book Description

From Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, authors of the PEN Center USA award-winning Dallas 1963, comes a madcap narrative about Timothy Leary's daring prison escape and run from the law. On the moonlit evening of September 12, 1970, an ex-Harvard professor with a genius I.Q. studies a twelve-foot high fence topped with barbed wire. A few months earlier, Dr. Timothy Leary, the High Priest of LSD, had been running a gleeful campaign for California governor against Ronald Reagan. Now, Leary is six months into a ten-year prison sentence for the crime of possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Aided by the radical Weather Underground, Leary's escape from prison is the counterculture's union of "dope and dynamite," aimed at sparking a revolution and overthrowing the government. Inside the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon drinks his way through sleepless nights as he expands the war in Vietnam and plots to unleash the United States government against his ever-expanding list of domestic enemies. Antiwar demonstrators are massing by the tens of thousands; homemade bombs are exploding everywhere; Black Panther leaders are threatening to burn down the White House; and all the while Nixon obsesses over tracking down Timothy Leary, whom he has branded "the most dangerous man in America." Based on freshly uncovered primary sources and new firsthand interviews, The Most Dangerous Man in America is an American thriller that takes readers along for the gonzo ride of a lifetime. Spanning twenty-eight months, President Nixon's careening, global manhunt for Dr. Timothy Leary winds its way among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and secret agents on four continents, culminating in one of the trippiest journeys through the American counterculture.




The Confidence Men


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Great Escape for the Great War: the astonishing true story of two World War I prisoners who pulled off one of the most ingenious escapes of all time. FINALIST FOR THE EDGAR® AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR • “Fox unspools Jones and Hill’s delightfully elaborate scheme in nail-biting episodes that advance like a narrative Rube Goldberg machine.”—The New York Times Book Review Imprisoned in a remote Turkish POW camp during World War I, having survived a two-month forced march and a terrifying shootout in the desert, two British officers, Harry Jones and Cedric Hill, join forces to bamboozle their iron-fisted captors. To stave off despair and boredom, Jones takes a handmade Ouija board and fakes elaborate séances for his fellow prisoners. Word gets around, and one day an Ottoman official approaches Jones with a query: Could Jones contact the spirit world to find a vast treasure rumored to be buried nearby? Jones, a trained lawyer, and Hill, a brilliant magician, use the Ouija board—and their keen understanding of the psychology of deception—to build a trap for their captors that will ultimately lead them to freedom. A gripping nonfiction thriller, The Confidence Men is the story of one of the only known con games played for a good cause—and of a profound but unlikely friendship. Had it not been for “the Great War,” Jones, the Oxford-educated son of a British lord, and Hill, a mechanic on an Australian sheep ranch, would never have met. But in pain, loneliness, hunger, and isolation, they formed a powerful emotional and intellectual alliance that saved both of their lives. Margalit Fox brings her “nose for interesting facts, the ability to construct a taut narrative arc, and a Dickens-level gift for concisely conveying personality” (Kathryn Schulz, New York) to this tale of psychological strategy that is rife with cunning, danger, and moments of high farce that rival anything in Catch-22.




Zero Night


Book Description

Non-fiction that reads like a novel! A thrilling, moment by moment account of an epic escape and the real-life adventures that followed.




Escape From Prison


Book Description

"Bashiru Adamu writes striking words that will probably resonate with people everywhere, facing challenges at different times in their lives: " On September 8, 2017, my youth Afripreneurship Town Hall in Lagos was filled with young Nigerian entrepreneurs and aspiring ones: students, traders, bankers, side-hustlers, business managers, engineers, and at least one very memorable social entrepreneur. About 425,000 viewers were also watching online! When