Jacques Barzun & Wendell Hertig Taylor, on Solitary Confinement by Christopher Burney: “A remarkable book and in some ways the most remarkable in this entire Catalogue. It records 18 months’ life in a French prison as a captive of the Gestapo during the Second World War. The observation and recall are not more amazing than the writing and compression of thought. Implications for criminology (especially discussions of capital punishment) and for sociology and education occur on every page. It is enough to mention that the prisoner’s transfer to Buchenwald toward the end of his ordeal struck him as disagreeable because of the threat of sociability.” (A Catalogue of Crime)