"Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853-1920 returns us to St. Louis, where Andrews describes the interactions between tyrannical guards and inmates, mostly working-class and poor people across racial lines. In ten brilliantly written chapters, Andrews introduces us to a colorful cast of characters while reminding readers of the profound harshness that scared so many. This book has much to offer to a wide range of readers. Professors looking for a readable study that will capture students' attention will benefit by assigning it in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. Above all, historians of labor, Missouri, and the carceral state will undoubtedly appreciate Andrews's attention to the darker side of the so-called Progressive Era."--Missouri Historical Review "A searing account of life on the margins of America. Archivally rich, unique in its focus on the tragedies and injustices of one river-town institution, and written with deep compassion for the remarkable stories of its subjects, this is an essential and urgent slice of forgotten social history.

"--Thomas Ruys Smith, author of Deep Water: The Mississippi River in the Age of Mark Twain "Andrews's meticulously researched and smartly written study of St. Louis's Old Workhouse, a site of institutionalized corruption and shocking violence, illuminates the process by which poverty, race, and dissent were criminalized in the service of labor discipline, political repression, and social control. Andrews's recovery of the stories and voices of downtrodden prisoners--their condition and acts of resistance--constitutes not only an achievement of scholarship but of justice."--Matthew E. Stanley, author of Grand Army of Labor: Workers, Veterans, and the Meaning of the Civil War "In this shocking history, Gregg Andrews meticulously details the Dickensian conditions of the St. Louis Old Workhouse, an institution that well into the twentieth century exercised a brutal carceral regime against the city's most vulnerable citizens. Expertly researched and compellingly written, Andrews's study infuses humanity in an otherwise cruel, unfeeling system. This book is an invaluable contribution to not only St.

Louis history but the history of American workhouses, a severely understudied topic that reveals uncomfortable truths of today."--Melissa Ford, author of A Brick and a Bible: Black Women's Radical Activism in the Midwest during the Great Depression.