Fluffing The Concrete

“I was led in chains to an African prison cell when I was 24 years old. On a soul-chilling night when many young men my age were cuddling with their wives or girlfriends, I was lying on an icy concrete floor, spooning with a Moroccan thug to avoid freezing to death.”

So begins the harrowing, fascinating, exotic, and often hilarious memoir of Mack’s incarceration in a Third World country for a crime that could have resulted in a life sentence. Happily, it didn’t, but the tale of how he was secretly swallowed up by the justice system in a country ruled by a king and where the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply is a heart-in-your-throat page-turner. Still, his unique sense of humor shines through on every page, even as he tells of rats crawling inside prisoners’ clothing and surviving on what he called “goat-butt soup.” Fluffing the Concrete: Making the Most of Foreign Prison–Or Anything Else is a powerful, memorable, entertaining read you’ll want to share with others.