This memoir is full of great stories both from the author's life, and from the lives of the prisoners he worked with. At one point, Steinberg suggests to an aspiring author that his pimp memoir needs more of the points of view of the women in his life, and I kind of wondered if many of the stories of the prisoners found their way into Running the Books because of a similar suggestion to Steinberg. In addition to his direct experiences working in a prison library, Steinberg also writes about Jewishness, Boston, and the history of prisons. I often wondered how much I should believe of his story. After all, I can't imagine maintaining anywhere near the level of integrity he had after working any job in a prison for 2 years.