Blood in the Water: HEATHER ANN THOMPSON.

• Author: Ciaramella, C.J.
• Position: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Heather Ann Thompson's 2016 history of the Attica Prison takeover, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, won a Pulitzer Prize in history for its deeply researched account of the deadliest prison incident in U.S. history. But there's one place you can't read it: inside New York prisons.

The 1971 takeover of Attica ended after four days when roughly 550 law enforcement officers retook the prison by force, dumping tear gas on the prison yard and then firing buckshot indiscriminately into the fog. They killed 39 people, including nine hostages. Afterward, the state of New York engaged in a decadeslong cover-up to hide the truth about the carnage. As the book ban shows, it's still at it.

For Thompson, there is a rich irony in her book being banned inside the very walls of Attica. "One of the key demands at Attica was an end to censorship," she tells Reason. Inmates' books, newspapers, and letters from loved ones were often tossed in the trash, especially if they were in Spanish. Inmates won the right to read more freely after Attica, but Thompson says there's been an overall backsliding in prison conditions over the past 40 years, of which the ban on her book is only a part.

In March, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Civil Rights Clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo...