Eye of the Hurricane

Book excerpt: Onetime seemingly unstoppable boxing champion, victim of a false conviction for a triple homicide, and spokesperson for the wrongfully incarcerated, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter is a controversial twentieth century icon. In this moving narrative, Dr. Carter tells of the metaphoric and physical prisons he has survived: his poverty-stricken childhood, his troubled adolescence and early adulthood, his 19-year imprisonment with 10 years in solitary confinement, and the knowledge that his life was forever altered by injustice. A spiritual as well as factual autobiography, his is not a comfortable story or a comfortable philosophy, but he offers hope for those who have none, and his words are a call to action for those who abhor injustice. Eye of the Hurricane may well change the way we view crime and punishment in the twenty-first century.