The book club is a syllabus for prisoners to read over the course of 14 weeks. The books are selected by 52 ambassadors, writers who would commit to be part of it and do this work in prison. And when they go into a prison, we send them multiple copies of that book or several copies of other titles which they want to discuss with each other. It's essentially kind of like a anthology, but all the works within it go back and echo within the freedom library.
Author, lawyer, and poet Dwayne Betts talks about his time in prison and the power of reading with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Betts is the founder of the Million Book Project, which aims to put a small library of great books in 1,000 U.S. prisons. Betts discusses his plans for the project and how reading helped him transform himself.