[dragonwriter]

> Federal bureau of prisons will not let you mail books on any subject to inmates unless directly from the publisher.

That's not precisely true. BOP allows softcover books at minimum and low security facilities from any source, but hardcover books or any books at medium and higher security facilities must be shipped directly from “the publisher, from a book club, or from a bookstore.” (And exceptions can be made, though it requires a special request, if the book is no longer available from those sources.) But shipping from Amazon direct, as was reported elsewhere in the thread to be the case here, would seem to be okay.

Software engineering would not categorically seem to fall into any of the explicitly listed (but expressly not exhaustive) problem categories (unless you perversely misread “written in code”, which seems clearly intended to refer to encyphered/encrypted content), but the threat to order justification is fairly elastic (though a warden’s decision on this can be appealed by the inmate or an independent review may be requested by the sender or publisher.)

https://www.bop.gov/policy/progstat/5266_011.pdf

[hackermailman]

Every prison mailroom is different, I usually just ignore what the bop or state website claims and phone the prison mailroom directly to ask. In general, all books must come from a store/publisher, and have an invoice. I use Books A Million for prison deliveries because they always include an invoice and Amazon often doesn't.

Anybody wondering some good books for prison are the Little Schemer series of books, since they can be done with pencil & paper. The Schemer's Guide is another pencil & paper boook if you can find it. Kernighan also has a good book for this but it contains a chapter on cryptography which some prisons may not allow but I haven't had any problems yet "Understanding the Digital World: What You Need to Know about Computers, the Internet, Privacy, and Security" or get the older paperback version "D is for Digital". They give an intro to programming. Code by Charles Petzold, a really good intro book, may not get in either just because of the title.