Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr

by James Carr , Isaac Cronin (Introduction)

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96 · rating details · 94 ratings · 17 reviews

"When I was nine years old I burned down my school."

James Carr started fighting when he was very young, and never gave up. A child prodigy of crime in the streets of the L.A. ghettos and scourge of half a dozen boys’ homes, his career in armed robbery was quickly cut short by arrest. In prison he fought harder than ever, and became one of the most notorious rebels in the s ...more

Paperback , 240 pages

Published October 1st 2002 by AK Press (first published 1975)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

Or buy for

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about BAD , please sign up .

Be the first to ask a question about BAD

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 152)

filter | sort : default (?) | rating details

Jun 16, 2012 Matt Raygun rated it 2 of 5 stars

My immediate problem with this book is that it glorifies a character that glamorizes rape and sexual violence. The kind of behavior that James Carr boasts of throughout this book is exactly the kind of thing that would get any activist, anarchist, or punk exiled from an entire community.

So honestly, despite a single clever insight into the nature of crime, the ineffectiveness of the SF Black Panthers, and a generally brutal expose' of prison life, there is little value in this book. I'm actually ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Nate I like the idea that books have to be about people who's actions you endorse 100% and if they don't AK Press shouldn't publish them. Sadly this seems ...more
Dec 08, 2012 06:38AM

Matt Raygun Nate wrote: "I like the idea that books have to be about people who's actions you endorse 100% and if they don't AK Press shouldn't publish them. Sadl Nate wrote: "I like the idea that books have to be about people who's actions you endorse 100% and if they don't AK Press shouldn't publish them. Sadly this seems to be the mindset of some of the "anarchist" "p..."

Nate, i think my largest problem with the book is that the kind of intellectual political revisionism that pervades the back cover, introduction, and afterword are really nowhere to be found in the words of James Carr. The afterword claims that Carr left the Panthers because he was disillusioned with Stalinist guerrilla ideology, but as Carr tells it, he was more distracted by the opportunity for sex with his new girlfriend.

This is an interesting book, but its false advertising soured my reading of it. The introduction, back cover, and publisher sells the reader on a completely different experience than the one I had when I read Carr's own words. Words like "situationist" are mentioned exactly zero times by Carr.

AK, under the NABAT label, usually publish books of individuals who lived incredible lives, and despite their flaws, are found to be sincere in whatever beliefs they have. After Carr boasts of his tenth (or so) sexual assault, I (personally) had a difficult time empathizing with anything this character was going to do with his life. As much as I thought the expose on prison life was interesting, the sheer bravado Carr has in his (many) sexual assaults make this a book I, personally, would feel uncomfortable presenting to my friends in the radical community. Carr, despite the revisionism of the editors, is simply too amoral for my liking. I also feel that he should not be portrayed as a hero to leftists, because I just don't see anything heroic in his own words. He is interesting, but as a character, he's more like Alex from A Clockwork Orange than Eldridge Cleaver.

So nate, its not that I feel this book should not have been published, its that I feel this book should not have been advertised as something that it was not.

Lastly, you obviously have strong opinions about what you consider punk and anarchist, and I would like to think if we were disagreeing over this book in person that we could give each other the respect that doesn't involve placing those words in quotation marks. ...more
updated Dec 08, 2012 12:25PM

Nate mmm, ok.

Is it fucked up that I find Eldridge Cleaver more morally reprehensible than Carr?

But the more Alec than Cleaver, i see that, that is a good mmm, ok.

Is it fucked up that I find Eldridge Cleaver more morally reprehensible than Carr?

But the more Alec than Cleaver, i see that, that is a good analogy. And it's true that the intro and covers are framed in a political context, and that Carr deosn't really speak that language.

But i think it's fair to say he was disillusioned with the dogmatism of the party and how long it took to get through a meeting in order to get to an action. So, as I see it, him going off to get drunk and have sex with his girlfriend is him being more like 'whenever you guys are done squabbling let me know, I'll be over here.'

Cause he was a criminal first, and was down to be a soldier for the revolution, but he's about the action. So he might not use the right words, and probably didn't know what 'situationist' meant, but he'd be the first one willing to, say, rob a bank.

What I really took from the book was the panthers inability to successfully take in guys like Carr, who is the quintessenital american prisoner.

And yeah, sorry, for the rudeness of my post; sometimes being behind a keyboard is like being behing the wheel of a car.

What I don't like tho, is that so many (punk-anarchist, and if you'll excuse my assumption-white) people I know who've read this book love it until Carr repeatedly rapes a white boy untill he loses his mind...I mean, obviously that's incredibly hard to stomach, but it's a very honest depiction of something that happens inside american prisons that goes virtually ignored by everyone. And I'm sure you know this, rape is the first thing people associate with prison; that's really what's seen as the worst part about going in.

I just tend to get my hackles up about this book, beacause I feel the mentality behind the distaste for it runs along the lines of 'oh, you're black superhero revolutionary turns out to be just a by-product of the prison industrial complex so it's a story not worth listening to'.

You know? Am I talking reckless here?

It's a story that resonated with me a lot and i just think it sucks that the book gets trashed so much. ...more
Dec 09, 2012 09:39PM

Jan 25, 2009 Clark rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: real-talk

Dark stuff. Carr was a scary motherfucker. You can't really go wrong with any of the books in this series.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Mar 19, 2012 Bythedeed rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this book sometime last year, and was really surprised that a lot of friends had recommended.

(Also if you haven't read this book, there is a lot of graphic physical and sexual violence in it.)

Bad is pretty much one long story about all the fucked up things James Carr did growing up and as an adult (in and out of various boys homes, juvie and prisons the whole time). At some point the editors praise him for never saying he's sorry (something i entirely disagree with in this instance), as ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 14, 2015 Ellis Amdur rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book is published by a fringe beyond fringe anarcho-syndicalist group, and their politics, which Carr gravitated to, frames the book in forward and afterwards. Most of the book is his life story, and I am not settled if he would be best considered a child with a hair-trigger temper, and ease with violent response, who due to the environment he grew up in, became "violentized" - or he is simply a sociopath. (What's the distinction? - the former is a rough survivor born in a war zone, but remo The book is published by a fringe beyond fringe anarcho-syndicalist group, and their politics, which Carr gravitated to, frames the book in forward and afterwards. Most of the book is his life story, and I am not settled if he would be best considered a child with a hair-trigger temper, and ease with violent response, who due to the environment he grew up in, became "violentized" - or he is simply a sociopath. (What's the distinction? - the former is a rough survivor born in a war zone, but removed from that war zone, he or she tends not to continue to wage war. The latter will make his own wars, and peace is something to be willingly broken).

He deserved each of his incarcerations. He was a violent criminal, and at no point in this book does he express any remorse or regret for the violence, including prison rapes that he was a part. He writes: “He stammered something I didn’t pay much attention to, since by then I had his pants down and already had my cock halfway up his ass.” Most of the book is, in fact, a reminiscence of a life not apparently regretted. And many of the 'radicals' and gangsters he associated, George Jackson chief among them, were people who embraced evil on their own. I certainly am not negating the role of environment - including the violence many suffered in their homes, and the virulent racism during the time he grew up - but there are those who find themselves quite comfortable in such a world and thrive--apex predators will make any environment a hunting ground.

And finally, it's hard to know what to make of his association with the Anrcho-Syndicalists. Their political philosophy is such a complicated stew that I cannot help be skeptical of his relationship with them. The A-S, hyper-intellectual and contentious, often treats all other political factions, be they Communists and Stalinists and Maoists and liberals with contempt. Was their alliance with them anything more than, from them, like having a somewhat tamed tiger to show off? The afterwards by one of the A-S folks certainly comes off that way.

The book is invaluable, however, for showing the intertwining of criminality and left-fascism that imbued the Black Panthers, and other similar groups--totalitarian thugs who burnished a little ideology over opportunistic power plays, from 'radical chic' to drug selling, to torture and murder of some of their own.

It is refreshing that in the latter part of the book, Carr doesn't make himself out to be a victim, per se. He doesn't blame his parents or the economic system. His portrayal of the prison system of the time is dead accurate, as best as I can tell--the the official violence of the institution, the divide/conquer strategy that, in part, led to the rise of prison gangs, and the truth that in a chaotic environment, sociopaths like George Jackson and james Carr will thrive. Thus, the descriptions of gang life of his time period, youth camps and prison are invaluable.

Still, I'm really ambivalent. It is one thing to be stand up and not whine or apologize for what one did. But he killed and raped people, and recounts that with no more apparent emotion than any day-to-day act. That the quote of George Jackson is so often used as an epigram/description of this book - "Jimmy was the baddest motherfucker" cannot be considered praise, unless one values compliments from a psychopathic murderer.

Maybe some committed to political beliefs similar to those of the publisher and afterwords writer will find the book inspiring. For the vast majority of those who don't share their arcane beliefs, perhaps the value of this book is the disquiet it leaves you with. ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 31, 2009 Joshua rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs-biographies-autobiographi

I finished reading BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr not too long ago. It put me in a pensive mood. Starting with Sister of The Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha - as told to Dr. Ben Reitman , I've been working my way through (and for the most part enjoying the hell out of) The NABAT Books Series .

With BAD, James Carr was historically notable in that he co-founded The San Quentin Wolf Pack, an early prison reform movement and a predecessor to The Black Panthers. Otherwise his life would I finished reading BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr not too long ago. It put me in a pensive mood. Starting with Sister of The Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha - as told to Dr. Ben Reitman , I've been working my way through (and for the most part enjoying the hell out of) The NABAT Books Series .

With BAD, James Carr was historically notable in that he co-founded The San Quentin Wolf Pack, an early prison reform movement and a predecessor to The Black Panthers. Otherwise his life would have been pointless; this autobiography is one of the few I've read by someone wholly without a conscience (William F. Buckley aside).

That he found himself a historical footnote is purely a coincidence. James Carr was a true sociopath who committed atrocious acts of violence mainly to alleviate ennui. He eventually embraced Marx and Lenin and the vague notion of "revolution" with a pedantic zeal but without having any experience in the world against which to apply those philosophies. Even his supposed redemption in marrying and fathering a child, creating a nucleus of intimacy and difference, before being gunned down was punctuated by words and actions that belied any semblance of being more than a domesticated monster. It's also worth noting that the sentences he earned that resulted in his spending the majority of his life spent in prison were, without exception, wholly justified.

In any struggle for an oppressed people to gain freedom, equality, rights, or whatnot, an important early step is expressing and moving past very real and very justified anger. But too often people — and entire movements — get mired in anger, refusing or unable to move past it to to make their voices heard and their positions respected. Too often they end up setting the cause for which they are working back. You see this in the sputtering populist rage of Tea Party types, in the smashing and burning of corporate symbols by the ultra left at G8 protests, in the impotent century-old calls for oppressed workers to arise in a Socialist revolution. None of these groups will ever see their agenda succeed until they move past focusing on anger and onto constructive change. Most likely none ever will.

That James Carr is celebrated as a hero and cultural icon is due to his life being an expression of rage against the world. And that in a way was necessary for the times in that his expression of anger, even though it didn't contain even a speck of altruism, was used by others as a catalyst, albeit vicarious, for an early stage of overcoming oppression. But based on his own words, the highest form of nonviolent emotion Carr was capable of expressing was one of prison fraternity. I doubt he had the emotional capacity to move beyond a primal stage to actually make a difference. And it's doubtful Carr could have come to any other end than one of pointless violence.

Still, the detached voice in which he unapologetically describes his life — raping, murdering, stealing, maiming — made this a captivating book, and a study of a man without emotion swept into the larger current of a movement others embodied in him and a movement I can't decide if he helped or hindered. ...more

flag Like · see review

Sep 22, 2014 Mickael Broth rated it 2 of 5 stars

Depraved to say the least. It would be one thing if it gave a true insight into the brutal violence discussed.. But honestly I found this book little more than disturbing and self-glorifying.

flag Like · see review

Apr 04, 2015 Karen Talley rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book years ago and it terrified me. REALLY, it scared me.

flag Like · see review

Aug 13, 2009 Hunter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing story of the radicalization of a pretty brutal dude who grew up in and out of prison in the 50s and 60s in California. The brutality is actually quite intense and told with an unsettling indifference, but that means he never makes himself out to be a victim. His critique of the 60s radical left and their fetishization of black prisoners is interesting too.

flag Like · see review

Dec 08, 2012 Nate rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Nate by: worker at a used bookstore.

I like the idea that books have to be about people who's actions you endorse 100% and if they don't AK Press shouldn't publish them. Sadly this seems to be the mindset of some of the "anarchist" "punk" reviewers on this site. Sad.
I loved this book; it's one of my favorites. Really I feel it's essential reading.

flag Like · see review

Nov 19, 2009 Gerard rated it 5 of 5 stars

Prisons do not rehabilitate and are not meant to. But inadvertently they lead some to radicalism. And this is the best rehabilitation imaginable. A lot in here on George Jackson, a thorn in the side of the racial divide.

flag Like · see review

Dec 08, 2008 Matty B rated it 5 of 5 stars

Almost no political content. I refer back to this book to revisit his cold, light, and totally intelligent descriptions of brutality and conquest in prison in sex and on the street.

flag Like · see review

Dec 03, 2007 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

James Carr was a comrade in arms of George Jackson. This book is of interest and importance to those interested in the Black Panthers, the U.S. prison-industrial complex, and revolution.

flag Like · see review

Dec 04, 2008 Edmund rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book on a hammock in plaintive suburbs in Wisconsin. Puts you in a relaxed frame of mind for all of the prison rape anecdotes. I'm gonna go curl up into a ball now.

flag Like · see review

Apr 01, 2008 Scott Kelly rated it 3 of 5 stars

Top shelf prison biography. Amongst other things, James Carr was the Heavyweight Powerlifting Champion of the California Prison System in the 70's.

flag Like · see review

Jun 20, 2011 Shenanitims rated it 4 of 5 stars

An amazing look into just what the modern penal system looks like. Hard, unflinching, and scary.

flag Like · see review

Apr 09, 2010 Skip rated it 4 of 5 stars

nothing makes a difference, but live the life you want to live.

flag Like · see review

Jan 21, 2008 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Pretty much all the book in this series are amazing.

flag Like · see review

Mongi rated it 4 of 5 stars
Jul 26, 2015

Chris Swart marked it as to-read
Jul 23, 2015

Lhson marked it as to-read
Jun 27, 2015

Shoshone rated it 4 of 5 stars
May 25, 2015

Betty marked it as to-read
May 04, 2015

Dawn rated it 4 of 5 stars
Jul 12, 2015

Nate marked it as to-read
Mar 30, 2015

Clara rated it 4 of 5 stars
Feb 06, 2015

Meredith Alling rated it 3 of 5 stars
Jan 08, 2015

Britt Boone added it
Jan 04, 2015

Travis Everett rated it 3 of 5 stars
Dec 10, 2014

Josh Baltimore rated it 4 of 5 stars
Nov 20, 2014

Captain Kidd marked it as to-read
Sep 25, 2014

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

Genres

Biography

5 users

Non Fiction

2 users

See top shelves...

Books by James Carr

Annals and Stories of Colne and Neighbourhood

The Jig Is Up: How Georgia Can Lead The Way Towards A Sustainable Future

Experiences of Islamophobia: Living with Racism in the Neoliberal Era

Annals and Stories of Colne: And Neighbourhood (Classic Reprint)

More…

Share This Book

Share on your website

title link	preview: BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr
avg rating	preview: BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr Goodreads rating: 3.96 (94 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/833277.BAD?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328696841l/833277.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/833277.BAD?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr by James Carr[/url]

+ Share on your website

Trivia About BAD: The Autobiog...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

See a Problem?

Preview — BAD by James Carr

BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Genres

Books by James Carr

Share This Book

Share on your website

Trivia About BAD: The Autobiog...

See a Problem?

Preview — BAD by James Carr

BAD: The Autobiography of James Carr

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic Discuss This Book

Genres

Books by James Carr

Share This Book

Share on your website

Trivia About BAD: The Autobiog...

new topic
Discuss This Book