From a maximum-security prison to a cancer ward, from a mental institution to the World Trade Center, Laurence Gonzales's prose grips from the first sentence. Sometimes hair-raising, sometimes heart-wrenching, among these essays is "Marion Prison," a National Magazine Award finalist, with its intimate view inside the most maximum security prison in America. "House of Pain" takes the reader into the life of a brain surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, a grim world that few ever see. "Rites of Spring," another National Magazine Award finalist, follows Gonzales and his then wife on their journey through cancer, not once, but twice.<br><br><br><br>Other stories venture above the Arctic Circle, fly deep into the Alaskan wilderness among grizzly bears and trumpeter swans, explore aerobatics in high-performance aircraft, and eulogize aspects of Memphis and Miami as American cities that mourn their fates in uniquely different ways.<br><br>