Birdman of Alcatraz

"He was called 'The Birdman of Alcatraz.' Robert Stroud, Lifer Number 594. His world, for most of his life, was a prison cell, twelve feet long and six feet wide, in isolation from all other prisoners. When he first entered a prison, Teddy Roosevelt was still President, income tax was an idea that was years away, and the Czar still ruled in Russia. But, with only a third grade education and equipment he fashioned from scrap, he became a respected scientist, raised hundreds of birds in cages in his cell, and became an authority on bird disease, and wrote the definitive book on the subject which remains in print to this day. It is true that he had been a drifter as a boy; and that he had indeed killed a man in Alaska, and that he later killed a prison guard in Leavenworth. And for this he paid a terrible price in isolation and loneliness for close to fifty years. Yet he was able to endure and to learn and to change." -- Page [4] of cover.