Sing Sing Follies (A Maximum-Security Comedy)

<p><strong>I can't wait for you to read this. I hope it thrills and confounds and inspires you just like it did me. -Greg Kwedar co-writer director and producer of <em>Sing Sing </em></strong></p><p></p><p><strong>At Sing Sing the infamous Gothic maximum-security prison on the Hudson River in New York some of the incarcerated pass their time and slay inner demons performing theater-in this case a silly slapstick comedy about pirates gladiators and mummies on a wacky journey through time. An article about this very special theater written by veteran literary journalist John H. Richardson is now a major motion picture starring Colman Domingo. </strong></p><p></p><p><strong>In this collection of magazine stories from <em>Esquire</em> and <em>New York</em> Richardson showcases seven of his most bizarre and eye-opening journeys into the American scene and psyche. Along with the story that became the movie <em>Sing Sing </em>read about:</strong></p><p></p><p>The Search for Isabella V is a mystery wrapped in an enigma involving a fugitive heiress lots of money one very real gun and layer upon layer of internet intimacy and digital deception. In I Should Have Been There to Protect Him we meet Michael Brown Sr. whose son was gunned down by a police officer in Ferguson Missouri and left to bleed in the street.</p><p></p><p>In The Abortion Ministry of Dr. Willie Parker an abortion doctor raised Christian in the South tries to bring services to women who need it; and in Ballad of the Sad Climatologists we meet men and women whose lives are filled with the grim facts of climate change day after day making a good night's sleep hard to come by. Children of Ted brings us face to face with the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. In the decades since his last deadly act of ecoterrorism he has become an unlikely prophet to a whole new generation of young acolytes. Finally we hear from the author himself as he tells the story of his father a high-ranking CIA spy.</p><p></p><p>Writes magazine historian Alex Belth: Richardson has the detached nonjudgmental observational eye of the perpetual outsider. He's curious and smart a realist with a spiky mordant sense of humor; a truth-seeker whether writing about abortion clinic doctors gun advocates or faded B-movie stars. Richardson loves characters on the fringe. And so will you.</p>