You are convicts. Your job here is to lie, cheat, steal, extort, get tattoos, take drugs, sell drugs, shank and sock each other. Just don’t let us catch you – that’s our job. We catch you, you got nothin’ coming. It is your worst nightmare. You wake up naked in an eight-by-ten-foot steel cell designated ‘Suicide Watch #3’. The cell is real. Jimmy Lerner, former family man and corporate strategic planner, has become a prison ‘fish’, or green new arrival. Taken to a penitentiary in the Nevada desert to serve a twelve-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, this previously nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn ends up sharing a claustrophobic cell with Kansas, a hugely muscled skinhead with a swastika tattooed on his neck and a serious set of issues. You Got Nothing Coming takes us into a corrupt world powered by violence, drugs, rape, fear and racial hatred. With brash, dark humour Jimmy Lerner tells us how the techniques learnt in management seminars have helped him survive in this hostile environment, and how a lethal act of self-defence landed him in this circle of American prison hell in the first place. Bracingly cynical and perceptive, this terrifying story is all truth.
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Review
'A considerable achievement…Forthrightly pulls back the curtain on a brutal system of punitive penal warehousing' -- The Washington Post
'Compelling and often screamingly funny...If you enjoyed The Shawshank Redemption, you will enjoy this even more' -- Sunday Express
'Extraordinary humour, a raw tension and an ear for dialogue straight from God.' -- Independent
'Compelling and often screamingly funny...If you enjoyed The Shawshank Redemption, you will enjoy this even more' -- Sunday Express
'Extraordinary humour, a raw tension and an ear for dialogue straight from God.' -- Independent
Book Description
The staggering memoir of a middle-class, middle-aged man who fell into the inferno of the American prison system, and what he had to do to survive
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is simply unputdownable. The wonderful array of colourful, brutal,weird and downright frightening characters is a better cast than any Hollywood prison drama.
Lerner manages to find humanity and even humour in a system where men are both brutal and brutalised.His fascinating journey from terrified new 'fish' to experienced lag using business management strategies for his own survival will keep you gripped from the first page to the last.
What we want now is a sequel showing how Lerner spent the remainder of his time in prison and, if he is now on the outside, how does he adapt to his freedom.
Trust me, after reading this you'll make sure you live your life on the straight and narrow! The best book I'v read this year.
Lerner manages to find humanity and even humour in a system where men are both brutal and brutalised.His fascinating journey from terrified new 'fish' to experienced lag using business management strategies for his own survival will keep you gripped from the first page to the last.
What we want now is a sequel showing how Lerner spent the remainder of his time in prison and, if he is now on the outside, how does he adapt to his freedom.
Trust me, after reading this you'll make sure you live your life on the straight and narrow! The best book I'v read this year.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Jimmy Lerner's journey from a corporate office to a claustrophobic prison cell with a giant neo-Nazi cellmate just staggers the imagination. Especially because this is a true story. The author kept me up most the night worrying, wondering (and hoping) how this nightmare would end.
Incredibly,the narrative voice has such a light, playful touch, despite the horrors happening all around.
This is a rare gem of a book, a nonfiction memoir that reads like the best of all novels!!!
I can't wait for the sequel!!!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By Huntsman
Format:Paperback
Jimmy had a normal, middle-aged, middle class life - he drank too much - but otherwise was a normal solid citizen. Through circumstances Jimmy, could not have envisaged, he found himself dragged out of his normal life and incarcerated with a bunch of psychotic, aggressive and drug addicted murderers, rapists, thieves and other various misfits.
Fortunately Jimmy (who is Jewish) is befriended by a huge Nazi, called Kansas, who protects him from some of the intimidation and extreme violence that he sees whilst inside. Jimmy is also assisted by his engaging personality and his ability to help other prisoners out in many ways, from reading for the illiterate, to giving them legal advice.
Jimmy is an engaging character with a cynical wit and an ability to laugh at himself. His story is highly entertaining, not without emotion and always containing humour.
Some of the characters in the jail seem to revel in the life inside. For some it is the only place where they feel as though they are important or they have a routine. Conversely, normal people who read this book will ensure they live law abiding lives henceforth.
I get through a few books (I have a long tube ride to work) and this is one of the most entertaining I have read in the last couple of years. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is a shattering, harrowing, hilarious account of one man - Everyman's - fall from Corporate heights into the hell of an American prison. A married, middle-class, frail, bespectacled man, the delightfully cheeky author is forced to share a tiny concrete cage with a Nazi gangleader dubbed "Kansas."
The author's metamorphosis from a newcomer, a "Fish" to a seasoned veteran of the asylum where the patients run the madhouse, is a scary, horrific, surreal and sensational tale that will keep you on the edge until the very end.
This is the best book I have had the pleasure of reading in quite some time!!!!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Mr. Warren M. Fisher
VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback
Stark, scary and hilarious, this is the blistering account of one man's descent into the belly of the beast and how he somehow survived. Lerner's humour in the face of the horror confronting him is outrageously funny, but he never loses sight of the madness and injustice of the penal system. The charcter sketches are priceless: sociopaths and losers, sadistic guards and deranged inmates are given such life that they transcend cliche.
This is probably among the finest ever books, fact or fiction, about life in 'The Big House', and never fails to inspire, entertain and outrage.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This book is a must if your interested in knowing what goes on inside those 4 walls they call Prison ! The reading style is very easy to follow and this is probably the funniest book I have ever read. The author explains the violence, the different gangs and the brutality that goes on inside. This is a definite must read and you will not be disappointed !
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By "nollie182"
Format:Paperback
..ok being a 16 year old girl, a book about a prision in the US, with brutal descriptions of male cruelty, did not seem appealing.
However been the open minded person I am I gave it a try. And man was I pleased I did.
However been the open minded person I am I gave it a try. And man was I pleased I did.
This book is filled from begining to end with humour which, at times, made me cry. Sitting on my school bus laughing to myself, I was engrossed in the book. A witty, honest description which a lot of us (thankfully) have had no experience of.
A book that takes you away to another world...but makes you feel glad to be back. Take my advice, read this book, and enjoy!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By J. durham
Format:Paperback
simply one of the greatest books i have read. written intelligently and with dark humour, it is compelling and a real page turner. hard to read at first as written as spoken with slang, but when get into it you can hear them in your head and it immerses you deep in the dialogue.
BUY IT
if you like it also try the crip book shown on same page. it is equally as good a read.
BUY IT
if you like it also try the crip book shown on same page. it is equally as good a read.
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4.3 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engrossing read
Really good book - I did do some research after having read it, and some of the facts have been brought into question, but this didn't detract from what was a great read.
Published 2 months ago by Simon
5.0 out of 5 stars
An incredible read.
This book is fantastic. Very hard to put down once you've started it! Mr.Lerner uses a great dose of dark humour along with empathy and real fear to describe what has happened to... Read more
Published 19 months ago by bryandd
1.0 out of 5 stars
Prison
The book was in awful condition,the book itself was good in small parts but overall not well written and boring.
Published on 24 Feb 2011 by youtie
5.0 out of 5 stars
You Got Nothing Coming
I first read this book about 8 years ago it is one of the best books i have ever read. I have since read dozens of books in the same group but never one as good as this, i have... Read more
Published on 14 Oct 2010 by Gary
3.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, if slightly unbelievable
While I have no doubt that Lerner's prison experiences are accurately documented in the first four fifths of the book, it's extremely difficult to believe the final chapter - the... Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2007 by Joe Cutts
4.0 out of 5 stars
Entertaining, but slightly lacking in depth
Jimmy Lerner ploughs a new literary furrow for himself here, with his clever juxtaposition of corporate life and prison life. Read more
Published on 22 May 2003 by Andrew Kerr
5.0 out of 5 stars
Utterly un-put-down-able
I became so involved in this compelling US prison memoir I was almost starting to suffer panic attacks myself by the end. Read more
Published on 11 May 2003 by Hugh Thomas
4.0 out of 5 stars
Film Script
Although a hugely entertaining book I have my doubts as to how much of this story is true. Too much of it fits together too neatly. Read more
Published on 20 Mar 2003 by "lippy_the_lion"
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