Tom Wicker A TIME TO DIE First Edition
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Tom Wicker A TIME TO DIE First Edition
First UK edition, first print hardback of A TIME TO DIE: The Attica Prison Revolt, by Tom Wicker and published by The Bodley Head Ltd., London in 1976.The book is in very good condition (clean red cloth boards and gilt lettering on spine which has only minor creasing to the spine edges) with light wear to the dust jacket, which is not price clipped - though the price has been crossed out with blue ink (very slight creasing to edges). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no inscriptions. There is minor tanning to the pages.
Tom Wicker (1926 2011) was one of postwar Americas most distinguished journalists, who wrote 20 books, covered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for The New York Times and became the papers Washington bureau chief and an iconoclastic political columnist for 25 years. Wicker's 1975 book A Time to Die: The Attica Prison Revolt, which recounted the events at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, during September 1971, received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Fact Crime book. He is also the author of several books about U.S. presidents, including Kennedy Without Tears: The Man Beneath the Myth (1964), JFK & LBJ: The Influence of Personality Upon Politics (1966), and One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (1991).
"In September 1971 the inmates of Attica, the upstate New York prison, revolted, took hostages and forced the authorities into four days of desperate negotiation. At the outset the rebels demanded - and were granted - the presence of a group of 'observers' to act as unofficial mediators. Tom Wicker, Associate Editor of the New York Times, was one of those summoned. A white liberal with a Southern upbringing, he joined the other observers - clergy, politicians, lawyers, radicals, black and white - in an attempt to work out a compromise that would respect the grievances of the prisoners without rejecting the claims of law and order. In four crucial days he 'learned more, saw more, and felt more than in most of the rest of my life'. As a member of a well-intentioned but often divided group, Wicker confronted the hostile prison bureaucracy, led by the State Commissioner, a man torn between professional loyalty and a sense of humanity. In fear of his life, he several times entered the besieged prison yard to parley with the prisoners - who would not deal directly with the authorities - whose leaders he came to know intimately and whose anger he came to know intimately and whose anger he came partly to share. Outside, the observers met the resentment of the state troopers waiting impatiently for the order to re-occupy the prison by storm. As time ran out, Wicker personally attempted to persuade Governor Rockefeller, as the ultimate repository of responsibility, to visit Attica, but failed. At that moment he realised that someone must tell the inmates that their revolt was doomed. In the end the police attack was launched, and as a result 43 men, hostages and prisoners, were killed. What went wrong?
This book is a courageous attempt to answer that question by a fair-minded and respected reporter who was there, and deeply involved. Hour by painful hour the account moves towards its ultimate, and needless, tragedy. A Time To Die is not just another exposure of prison conditions: it is a gripping suspense story, and it raises questions which all democratic societies will have to try to answer and for which the author claims no easy solution."
'A superb documentary ... ' Kurt Vonnegut Jr., New York Times Book Review
342 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs.
ISBN: 0 370 10399 8
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Tom Wicker A TIME TO DIE First Edition