"In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end ... In [this book], Bauer weaves a ... reckoning with his experiences together with a ... history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War"--