Jessica Mitford

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  1. Kind and Usual Punishment in California

    Imprisonment and programs for reformation of prisoners have proved too often to be incompatible. Reformation in prisons, George Bernard Shaw wrote, is really “a false excuse for wickedness.” Here is a study of the Catch-22 of modern prison life in the nation’s most populous state.

  2. Let Us Now Appraise Famous Writers

    First thing in the morning write down "The." Then follow with another word, then another.... Such advice and more goes out to the would-be author from the Stratford-on-Avon of correspondence schools. A successful author, self-taught, here tells about the fun and profit, or profit at least, in teaching writing for fun and profit.

  3. "Guilty as Charged by the Judge"

    “Did He Say 'Guilty as Charged by the Judge'?"
    Five men who hardly knew each other found themselves accused, tried, and, in the case of four, convicted of conspiracy. What does this say about the judicial process in America?

  4. Have the Undertakers Reformed?

    The proffered honor of having a coffin named after her was but one of the many aftereffects of Jessica Milford’s brilliant vivisection of the burial business in THE WIHKICAN WAY OF DEATH. In this postmortem she tells of many other changes and reactions provoked by her 1963 exposé.

  5. The Undertaker's Racket

    Jessica Mitford's curiosity about undertakers was "whetted by the funeral trade magazines which opened up for me the bizarre world of the 'average' American funeral, far more curious than the death customs of ancient days or remote tribes. Further investigation convinced me that the fall implications of the funeral industry are undreamt of by the average American, even in his nightmares." Her book, The American Way of Death, will be published this summer by Simon & Schuster.