It's only necessary to read a few pages of Mr. Steinberg's book before concluding that he has lead an unconventional life. Born in Jerusalem, settled in Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, Mr. Steinberg should be buzzing around Wall Street, or closing cases at a high-powered law firm. But no. Instead of living out his life in the echelons of power, he became the librarian for a Massachusetts prison. The recipient of the practical jokes and life stories of inmates who, in nicknaming him Bookie, acknowledged his lifelong love of books, Mr. Steinberg narrates, here, his years inside: intercepting love notes slipped into books buried in the stacks, learning the ins and outs of thug life, and navigating the often choppy waters that churn between fidelity to his job and friendship with the inmates with whom a rapport is inevitable.
Running The Books is a playful and endearing memoir of a man following his heart and finding himself in unfamiliar surroundings. But though it is both funny and charming, narrating the screwball antics of prisoners while making the most of Mr. Steinberg's naivety of the prison system, the book is best in its dark moments. In the spirit of The Wire, Mr. Steinberg has captured the other side of prison life, the side we never see: the mothers separated from sons they'll never know, the sons isolated from the fathers who abandoned them, the brothers in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the orphans who never knew another way. In filling out the backgrounds of the men and women he comes to know inside, Mr. Steinberg forces our society, intent upon reducing prisoners into a single, generalized, faceless villain, to see that the people we throw away, the people we consider trash, have names and families, pasts and plans. They are people, people who've done wrong, but people who haven't done wrong in a vacuum. They are people who deserve to be known and accounted.
To the extent that one person can enlighten us to the lives of those we condemn, Mr. Steinberg has managed the thing with grace. Yes, there's humor here and that's valuable, but the social undercurrent is what gives the piece its gravitas. (4/5 Stars)
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