It's Their House; I'm Just a Guest Paperback – September 23, 2014

Suspect Email [19] Known Spam Virus BlockerTHE BEST THING ABOUT READING DOUG KENT’S BOOK “IT’S THEIR HOUSE, I’M JUST A GUEST,” WAS, WELL, READING HIS BOOK BECAUSE……it reminded me of the sheer joy of reading a real book! I picked it up and started reading. Three hours later I put it down finished. In comparison, I dragged Roger Crowley’s superb “Empires of the Sea” along on my Dip Farewell Tour that began in Paris a year ago in August, then to Silver Spring and finally to Seattle earlier this year; and I was still only a third of the way through it. I’ve been reading Jung Chiang’s “Empress Dowager Cixi” for months and again I’m only about a quarter of the way through it. It just seems that today, with the demands of online media resources and the need to constantly produce reams of Peeriblah that no one will read, it’s hard to find the time to sit down and just read a good book.Make no doubt about it, “It’s Their House, I’m Just a Guest” is a good book, particularly for a first effort; probably because Doug focused on telling his story and not writing his own version of Les Miz. The story focuses on four subjects: Doug, other people, the federal prison system; and how they interacted over a three year period.Although I’ve worked with Doug on DW and his various Diplomacy games and publications for s years I’ve never really felt I’d gotten to know him. This book begins to reveal a person much more complex than I had suspected. The other characters were mostly stereotypes we all run into in our daily lives. I’ve never been in a prison or jail except as a visitor and with one exception, the LA County Jail, visiting Alcatraz, the Tower of London a prison ship turned youth hostel in Copenhagen, and the Lubyanka in Moscow were nothing more than interesting stops for a travel writer. However, the LA County Jail was something else. I was inside it once in the 1970s to deliver some legal papers to a lawyer friend who was visiting a client and to this day I can still hear and feel the sound of those massive steel gates banging shut behind me as I entered and the sheer joy of enjoying my freedom as I left a half hour later. Earlier this year I took Amtrak to Paso Robles and we went through Los Angeles. Just after leaving the train station the train slowed almost to a crawl as it made a turn and we passed within touching distance of the tall fence that separates the LA County Jail and the rail tracks. I thought to myself how difficult it must be for those in jail to be able to look out and see or at least hear those trains passing by day and night. And once again I heard the sound of those gates slamming shut.I suspect being in prison is like any other institutionalized experience that most of us have been through at one time or another. For me it wasn’t a prison; it was cruise ship, a six star hotel, Area 51 or any one of many hospitals. Like Doug’s prisons these institutions took me as a “guest” or temporary visitor but being in them, even if willingly, I was still giving up some of my freedom and privacy. Doug writes about his prison uniforms; and I recall the frustrations of dealing with a much too small hospital gown that that didn’t cover the essential spots. Doug writes about the food he was given; and I remember 11 course dinners with 6 different wines consumed while knowing that street people were going through the hotel’s dumpsters looking for something to eat. He tells about the beds he slept in, the lack of heating, etc. and I remember almost drowning in one of those super-soft, super-deep pillow mattresses that are all the rage now. It’s a reach, no doubt, but the fact is that both Doug and I were giving up our freedom, our privacy and our desire to be somewhere else with someone else. The difference, of course, is that Doug did it unwillingly and I did it by choice.So, I can empathize with Doug even though I haven’t shared his exact experience. And I can certainly say he got a much warmer welcome home from Tigger than I ever did from Esmeralda or Farinelli.Quote:Not a must read, but a thoughtful read. --- Larry Peery

Book Review: It’s Their House I’m Just A Guest – by Doug KentTime to review a book that is very different from the ones I usually read. This one is a first-person narrative about his experience as a federal inmate. He served a 46-month sentence for, basically, trading stocks without explicit authorization from his employer – but with the only intent of helping the company (i.e. he could not have personally benefitted.) As bizarre as that sounds, the book is not about his case per se but is instead about his experiences in the bizarro world of federal prison. He explains the rules that make no sense, the prisoners who make no sense, the prison employees whose actions often make no sense, etc. The part about his poor treatment by the prison health system is troubling to say the least, as is the section about his time in “The Hole” because another inmate blamed a theft on Doug rather than coming clean himself. He also recounts his last few months in a half-way house, where most of his attempts to get a job to comply with the rules of his detention there were thwarted, mostly by the rules of the half-way house itself.This is not an ex-con trying to attack the system out of anger, nor is it a guy trying to justify himself to the world. It’s just a welcome window on this world for the rest of us, to help us understand what folks go through sometimes in everyday contact with the criminal justice system. I am trying to help a family friend right now through some of these same issues, and it is a true conundrum sometimes to understand how to navigate all the rapids successfully.In addition to all this, though, Doug does a nice job of explaining how he dealt with all these issues psychologically. One can tell when reading the book that part of the point of it is as a catharsis for him, and we get to share in that. The passages about his wife Heather, and how she waited for him, supported him, got irrationally mad at him during his trip home and then apologized to him about it – all extremely touching. And I dare anyone reading about when Doug comes home at the end of the book, and his 20-year old cat remembers him and nuzzles him with a contented purr, not to shed a tear. At least if you are a cat person like I am.Let me come clean here at the end and say that Doug is a longtime friend of mine, from the world of boardgames. I am adding a link to this review so that those who want to buy the book from Amazon can do so. It’s worth doing. And Doug, buddy, congratulations on getting this published.

"It's Their House; I'm Just a Guest" is Douglas Kent's memoir about his stint in federal prison.It's an engaging read, both because of the subject matter it covers and because of Kent's naked honesty. It's compelling because of the magnitude of what Kent has dealt with in his life, and on top of this, Kent succeeds in drawing the reader into the frustrating world of wrestling with bureaucracy and workers who just don't care.A number of the figures here--Kent's dad, his ex-wife, and some of his fellow inmates--are painted in tragic and compelling detail, and this is in large part what makes the book so engrossing. Kent portrays himself as a head-down, stay-out-of-trouble inmate, but even so, I would actually have liked to see a bit more of Kent's interactions with some of these people (the inmates in particular)--the interactions he includes tend to be the most interesting parts of the book.Portions of the book are presented topically rather than chronologically, and sorting out what happened when can be slightly confusing at times. This isn't a major problem, but I would definitely have preferred an earlier and more detailed account of the crime Kent committed (his explanation is relatively brief and comes more than halfway through the book). At times, Kent includes more physical or procedural detail than the casual reader may be interested in, but this too is only a minor problem--the book still reads pretty fast, and on the balance, its strengths easily outweigh its flaws.In short, "It's Their House" is a compelling book, and if you're at all interested in what life in prison is like, you'll probably find it well worth your time.