"Henry!" said Emerson, peeking between the bars, "what are you doing in there?"

Thoreau famously replied, "Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?"

Thoreau meant that when laws are unjust, conscientious people should feel comfortable in captivity. He immortalized his views in "Civil Disobedience," an essay that coined a phrase and shook the world.

His words helped Gandhi throw the British out of India. They led Martin Luther King Jr. to write "Letter from Birmingham Jail" more than a century later. Protesters used "Civil Disobedience" in pressuring President Nixon to end the Vietnam War.

Later this month marks the anniversary of Thoreau's one night in jail. His stint in the stir was cut short when a veiled woman, probably his aunt, paid his taxes and got the charges dropped. (His mother is alleged to have slipped him cookies during his brief incarceration.)

Thoreau didn't actually write "Civil Disobedience" in jail. Plenty of good books have been composed in the hoosegow, however, and jail is a great place to curl up and give them the time they deserve.

That's what I learned last fall while serving 30 days in the Wake County lockup. (Thoreau went to jail out of principle; I went because I did something stupid and immoral: I drove an automobile while intoxicated, and not for the first time. I now abstain from alcohol.)

Late one night after lights out, I dog-eared the page I was reading in a collection of short stories by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. When I looked up from my pillow, I saw a surprising sight.

There on the next bunk, Nate (counterfeiting) was reading "Inca Gold" by Clive Cussler. That in itself was unremarkable. But in the bunk beside him, Mack (drug trafficking) was reading "Tai-Pan," the James Clavell opium epic.

And next to him, a first-time bank robber we had nicknamed Willie Wonka was reading a copy of National Geographic. Outlaw (parole violation) was perusing the Quran, and Luther (armed robbery), a young Muslim convert, was making notes in the margins of the King James Bible.

Lights out, TV off

As I would learn, men reading books in bed is not an uncommon sight in jail. During the day you play dominoes, chess, Scrabble and hearts. You watch Oprah, Jerry Springer, Maury Povich and "Friday Night SmackDown."

You do push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups and battle your fellow incarcerees in game after game of orange-ball (orange-ball is volleyball without a net, using a pair of orange uniform socks as a ball, one sock stuffed inside the other).

But after lights out -- which really means "television off" -- you catch up on your reading. Adult male readers are a dying breed in America, according to more than one recent study. Not true in the Wake County detention system.

Here's the thing: Most guys don't know they're going to jail, so they don't have a chance to plan ahead. They must content themselves with books chosen by the sheriff.

And while the scene I described above is accurate in its depiction of voracious reading, it is not a clear snapshot of the selections chosen for the sheriff's book club.

Each week, a detention officer opens the door of the cellblock and leaves a box of books there for an hour or so while inmates pick and paw through them and plan what to read in the coming days.

This scene repeats itself on every "pod" in the Wake County Public Safety Center downtown and the Jail Annex on Hammond Road, as well as the Detention Center across the street.

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