Horn’s commentaries have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered, and she is the founder of the social network Echo. Mary Roach has hailed her for “combining awe-fueled curiosity with topflight reporting skills,” while others have described her work as 'immaculately researched' and 'several notched above the typical reporter's insights.' Stacy Horn is the author of five nonfiction books, including Imperfect Harmony. Damnation Island shows how far we’ve come in caring for the least fortunate among us-and reminds us how much work still remains. And we follow the extraordinary Reverend William Glenney French as he ministers to Blackwell’s residents, battles the bureaucratic mazes of the Department of Correction and a corrupt City Hall, testifies at salacious trials, and in his diary wonders about man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.

We also hear from the era’s officials, reformers, and journalists, including the celebrated undercover reporter Nellie Bly.

'Enthralling it is well worth the trip.” - New York Journal of BooksĬonceived as the most modern, humane incarceration facility the world had ever seen, New York’s Blackwell’s Island, site of a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals, quickly became, in the words of a visiting Charles Dickens, 'a lounging, listless madhouse.' Digging through city records, newspaper articles, and archival reports, Stacy Horn tells a gripping narrative through the voices of the island’s inhabitants.

Damnation island