Examining the cases of two convicted killers who both experienced and changed modern-day corrections policy in America, award-winning New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Pete Earley delivers an eye-opening narrative of reprehensible crime, draconian punishment, and seemingly impossible reform in the harshest depths of the country’s most dangerous prisons.

In 1983, Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain, both serving life sentences at the U.S. Prison in Marion, Illinois, separately murdered two correction officers on the same day. The Bureau of Prisons condemned both men to the severest punishment that could legally be imposed, one created specifically for them. It was unofficially called “no human contact.” Fountain endured twenty-one years before dying alone. Silverstein lasted thirty-six years, longer than any other American prisoner held in isolation.

Pete Earley—the only journalist granted face-to-face access with Silverstein—examines profound questions at the heart of our justice system. No Human Contact elicits a uniquely deep and detailed understanding of the crimes committed, the use of solitary confinement, and the reality of life, redemption, and death behind prison walls.