This is a first hand account from a prison guard’s perspective of some of the most storied years at the infamous US Penitentiary at Alcatraz. George Gregory began his career as a guard for the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 1940. He was transferred to Alcatraz in 1947 and for the next 15 years worked on
The Rock . Gregory takes the reader on a correctional officer’s tour of duty, showing what it was like to pull a lonely, tedious night of sentry duty in the Road Tower, or witness illicit transactions in the laundry room, or forcibly quell a riot in the cell blocks. Without glamourizing or demonizing either staff or convicts, the book provides a candid portrayal of corruption, drug abuse and sexual practices, as well as efforts of reform and unrecorded acts of kindness. Various incidents in the memoir convey the fear, hatred, frustration, boredom and unavoidable tension of being incarcerated.