Judith Vazquez describes the process of creating a small hole in the rubber in front of her cell's window, by regularly scratching at it until she bled for half a year, in order to inhale the outside air.

Five Mualimm-ak was released from prison with no notice after the conclusion of a court case, and sent to the hospital by police who found him in a vulnerable state at the bus station.

Terry Kupers writes about psychological effects of solitary, such as the feeling that walls are moving in on the subject, and a compulsion to disobey guards' orders so as to increase their interaction time.

An afterword is written by Juan E. Méndez, a former United Nations special rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

[7][8] Bryan Schatz of Mother Jones wrote that "Reading this collection of essays by people who have experienced solitary confinement, it's not hard to see why" Méndez concluded this.

[9] Los Angeles Review of Books's Stephen Lurie noted that the experiences collected are from people whose solitary confinement did not destroy their ability to communicate with language.

Lurie found the book's existence to be "a minor act of rebellion", writing that the stories have "outlasted" or "escaped" the "regimes that systematically attempt to suppress communication of them".

McLemee found the situation of solitary confinement worse than Sartre's depiction of Hell, due to the smaller space and almost total absence of human interaction.

[7] A Kirkus Reviews journalist found that the book manages to "dig deep into the frailties of the human mind as well as the savagery of the American penal system and its ilk".

[2] Lurie thought the book was "crucial" to public awareness of solitary confinement, and that it gives "visceral human form to the practice".