Author: Jamie Pamela Rasmussen Asked how the Missouri State Penitentiary compared to other famous prisons, a historian and former prison administrator replied, “ It’s older and meaner.” For 168 years, it was everything other prisons were and more.                 In The Missouri State Penitentiary, Jamie Pamela Rasmussen recounts the long and fascinating history of the place, focusing on the stories of inmates and the struggles by prison officials to provide opportunities for reform while keeping costs down. Tales of prominent prisoners, including Pretty Boy Floyd, Sonny Liston, and James Earl Ray, provide intrigue and insight into the institution’s infamous reputation.                 The founding of the penitentiary helped solidify Jefferson City’s position as the state capital. A highlight in the chapter on the Civil War years is the story of George Thompson, who was imprisoned for attempting to help a number of slaves to freedom. The narrative enters the twentieth century with the controversy surrounding the various systems of inmate labor; the effort to make the prison self-supporting eventually caused punishment to be driven by factory needs. The example of Firebug Johnson demonstrates how inmates reacted to the prison labor system while Kate Richards O’Hare’s struggles and efforts to improve conditions in the penitentiary illuminate the role of women in the system at the time. A full chapter is devoted to the riot of 1954, and another concentrates on the reforms made in the wake of that catastrophe. Rasmussen also considers the effect inmate lawsuits during the 1980s and 1990s had on prison life before telling the story of the decision to close the prison.                 The Missouri State Penitentiary provides a fitting account of an institution that was part of Missouri’s history for well over a century. Numerous illustrations and a list of recommended reading contribute to the readers’ understanding of the history of the institution.

Author: Erwin H. Ackerknecht foreword and concluding essay by Charles E. Rosenberg bibliographic essay by Lisa Haushofer Humans have always become sick, suffered pain and disability, sought care and meaning; designated healers have always done their best with the time-bound intellectual tools at their disposal; one could only see what one was prepared to see. What professors professed was not the same as the everyday practice acted out at bedsides, whether in homes or, more recently, in hospitals. By reminding us of these stubborn realities, Ackerknecht offered a way of thinking about medicine that complicated but did not displace the standard history of Western medicine. It is this inclusive point of view that distinguished this Short History. While foregounding the intellectual and related clinical development of Western medicine, Ackerknecht sought, at the same time, to place it within a larger cultural, historicaland by implication, moralframework.Charles E. Rosenberg, Harvard University, author of Our Present Complaint: American Medicine, Then and Now Erwin H. Ackerknechts A Short History of Medicine is a concise narrative, long appreciated by students in the history of medicine, medical students, historians, and medical professionals as well as all those seeking to understand the history of medicine. Covering the broad sweep of discoveries from parasitic worms to bacilli and x-rays, and highlighting physicians and scientists from Hippocrates and Galen to Pasteur, Koch, and Roentgen, Ackerknecht narrates Western and Eastern civilizations work at identifying and curing disease. He follows these discoveries from the library to the bedside, hospital, and laboratory, illuminating how basic biological sciences interacted with clinical practice over time. But his story is more than one of laudable scientific and therapeutic achievement. Ackerknecht also points toward the social, ecological, economic, and political conditions that shape the incidence of disease. Improvements in health, Ackerknecht argues, depend on more than laboratory knowledge: they also require that we improve the lives of ordinary men and women by altering social conditions such as poverty and hunger. This revised and expanded edition includes a new foreword and concluding biographical essay by Charles E. Rosenberg, Ackerknechts former student and a distinguished historian of medicine. A new bibliographic essay by Lisa Haushofer explores recent scholarship in the history of medicine.