Book Review

“How to Not Die in Prison: A Survival Guide”

By Taylor Sheridan and Tom Nelson

c.2026, Simon & Schuster, $29.00, 243 pages

The handcuffs were tighter than you expected.

It was hard to walk with hands shackled behind you; that was another surprise. You’ve never been to prison before, and you’re up for a lot of unknowns. So read “How To Not Die in Prison” by Taylor Sheridan and Tom Nelson, and take a deep breath.

OK, so you messed up. You did something that seemed right at the time, but you know now that it wasn’t. And here you are, full of dread, feeling regretful, preparing yourself for time behind bars.

“This is a guidebook for the accidental felon,” Sheridan says. It’s not for someone who’s been inside two or three times. It’s for the guy (because men mess up more than women do) who’s staring at a sentence for months or years and wonders how life is about to change.

The first thing to know is that comfort is never a consideration in prison. There are no bathroom breaks on the way there; you might not even get fed. Once you’re in prison, you’ll be stripped, showered, and put into embarrassing, uncomfortable situations. If it’s hot outside, you won’t get cushy air conditioning; if it’s freezing out, you can expect to be cold in your cell. If you don’t like the food, nobody will care.

“If you slept with the girlfriend of a Hell’s Angel,” say the authors, “...the time to point that out” is on the first day, so any “special bull’s-eye on your back” can be dealt with.

You are not at the United Nations, so “your best bet is to stick with your own kind,” unless they are snitches, rapists or gang members. Know that word spreads fast in prison, including news of what you’re in for. Get a job. Make good allies; be a good ally.

And finally, remember that “You’re not going to be able to get by with your old tricks, and it’s going to take a lot of resourcefulness… to get through the challenges ahead of you.”

Let’s start at the beginning: If you’re thinking about committing a crime, say authors Taylor Sheridan and Tom Nelson, know that “it’s way better to avoid going to prison than to figure out how to survive one.”

That’s the kind of simple honesty you’ll get inside “How to Not Die in Prison,” plus bluntness, realism and fast talk, peppered with profanity and heavily laced with warnings. Nelson (a former prisoner) and Sheridan don’t pussyfoot around in this book: They’ll Scared Straight you in a minute. Reading this book will put a proper chill down your back, but it also fulfills its purpose by preparing a future convict for what’s ahead — at least a little bit, though readers may sense some edgy and very uneasy inadequacy.

Read this book if you’re a true crime aficionado. Read it before you go to prison. Better yet, before you decide to do something that’s going to put you behind bars, get “How to Not Die in Prison,” and get tight with what’s in it.

— The Bookworm Sez