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  • Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
  • Frankie Y. Bailey (bio)
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy By Heather Ann Thompson. New York: Pantheon Books, 2016. 752 pages, illustrations, maps, 6″ x 9.″ $35.00 cloth, $17.95 Vintage paperback, $17.95 ebook.

Blood in the Water by historian Heather Ann Thompson may well be the definitive book about the 1971 prisoner uprising at the maximum-security correctional facility in upstate New York. Thompson obtained primary sources that had not been available to other researchers. As she discusses in "State Secrets," her introduction to the book, she was invited to the New York State Museum by an archivist and saw the Attica documents, photos, clothing, and other artifacts that were stored there. She also was able to conduct oral history interviews with participants in the event who gave her access to documents in private collections. Other Attica documents turned up in the Erie County courthouse in Buffalo, New York. But, in spite of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), she was not able to obtain some documents held by state agencies. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Attica uprising approaches, the number of eyewitnesses to and participants in this event will be fewer. Future researchers on Attica will find it difficult to write a more thoroughly researched work. But Thompson asserts that her account is incomplete because government officials and law enforcement officers have worked to conceal the truth of what happened at Attica in the four days from September 9–13, 1971.

In spite of her own distrust of the efforts of agents of the state to control the historical narrative, Thompson writes about what happened at Attica using careful documentation that captures the complexities of the people and the situation in which they found themselves. Even the police and corrections officers who strip, beat, and abuse the prisoners who [End Page 144] survive the violent retaking of the prison are first introduced as men waiting to learn the fate of relatives and friends. At the same time, Thompson highlights the racism that powered their fury and played a role in the decision-making by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his advisers.

Thompson's book is divided into ten parts, each beginning with two or three pages from the perspective of an individual who was caught up in the turmoil of the uprising. These brief biographical perspectives include that of African-American prisoner Frank "Big Black" Smith, who is put in charge of the security force that the prisoners created to bring order to D Yard (the recreation area they had taken over). Thompson also introduces Michael Smith, a young white corrections officer, who is one of the men taken hostage. This other Smith has left college to get married and taken a job with benefits in the prison. The bios of the two men and the other individuals Thompson introduces provide both context and grounding for the reader who will have many names to remember. But these names and faces may be familiar to those who have seen the news clips and interviews done with survivors on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the uprising.

Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History for Blood in the Water. Her ability to describe what happened as a gripping narrative is one of the strengths of the book and makes it accessible to all readers. Using both primary and secondary sources, Thompson presents parallel and overlapping timelines for the uprising. This is particularly effective when negotiations to end the uprising are underway and the participants are unaware of what is happening elsewhere. During these sections of the book, Thompson is masterful in depicting the shifting moods in D Yard and among the journalists, politicians, and religious leaders whom the prisoners have requested as outside observers. She uses the tools of creative nonfiction to convey the tension as these men, enter the yard, and depart to deliver the prisoners' demands to Russell G. Oswald, the new, reform-minded commissioner of the Department of Corrections Services. Oswald then delivers their demands to Rockefeller, the governor...

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