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Sebastian Ritscher

JUST MERCY

Bryan Stevenson

A Story of Justice and Redemption

Stevenson is one of the country's most visionary legal thinker, a social justice advocate, as well as a MacArthur "genius." JUST MERCY is an intimate and unforgettable narrative journey into the broken American criminal justice system.
Mercy and justice must go hand-in-hand. When Bryan Stevenson graduated from Harvard Law School in 1988, he headed south to Alabama, a state on the verge of a crisis: the state was speeding up executions, but many of the condemned lacked anyone to represent them. On a shoestring budget he started the Equal Justice Initiative, a law practice dedicated to defending some of America's most rejected and marginalized people, driven by the belief that our society is ultimately judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members. Among the first cases he took on was that of Walter McMillian, a black man from Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn't commit. The case would change Bryan's life and transform his understanding of justice and mercy forever.

JUST MERCY is the story of the education of a young lawyer fighting on the frontlines of a country in thrall to extreme punishments and careless justice. It follows the suspenseful battle to free Walter before the state executed him, while also stepping back to tell the other dramatic and profoundly moving stories of men, women, and children, innocent and guilty, who found themselves at the mercy of a system often incapable of showing it. This is a exquisitely rendered account of a heroic advocate's fights on behalf of the most powerless people in our society, an inspiring story of unbreakable humanity in the most desperate circumstances, and a powerful indictment of our broken justice system and the twisted values that allow it to continue.

Bryan Stephenson is the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Since graduating from Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, he has secured relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, argued five times before the Supreme Court, and won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color. He has won numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant. He is also on the faculty of New York University Law School.
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Book

Published 2019-12-03 by Spiegel & Grau

Book

Published 2019-12-03 by Spiegel & Grau

Comments

Our American criminal justice system has become an instrument of evil. Bryan Stevenson has labored long and hard, and with great skill and temperate passion, to set things right. Words such as important and compelling may have lost their force through overuse, but reading this book will restore their meaning, along with one's hopes for humanity.

When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 3. Read more...

A passionate account of the ways our nation thwarts justice and inhumanely punishes the poor and disadvantaged.

...the author’s experience with the flaws in the American justice system add extra gravity to a deeply disturbing and oft-overlooked topic.

UK/BC: Scribe Germany/ Piper ; China/ Shanghai Joint Publishing ; Sweden/ Kinnehill : Korea/ Open Books ; Japan/Aki Shobo

This title has been named on New York Times’ 100 notable books of 2014. Read more...

Bryan Stevenson is America's young Nelson Mandela--a brilliant lawyer fighting with courage and conviction to guarantee justice for all.

Emotionally profound, necessary reading.

Bryan Stevenson is one of my personal heroes, perhaps the most inspiring and influential crusader for justice alive today, and Just Mercy is extraordinary. The stories told within these pages hold the potential to transform what we think we mean when we talk about justice.

Our author Bryan Stevenson recently spoke at GRID, the yearly two-day summit in Stockholm organized by Bonnier Media University, at which amazing speakers and storytellers share courageous ideas with passionate people from across the Bonnier world. Bryan’s riveting talk, “Doing the Uncomfortable” Read more...

Inspiring…a work of style, substance and clarity…Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, he’s also a gifted writer and storyteller.

Just Mercy is every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so…[It] demonstrates, as powerfully as any book on criminal justice that I’ve ever read... a remarkable amalgam, at once a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields.

From the frontlines of social justice comes one of the most urgent voices of our era. Bryan Stevenson is a real-life, modern-day Atticus Finch who, through his work in redeeming innocent people condemned to death, has sought to redeem the country itself. This is a book of great power and courage. It is inspiring and suspenseful. A revelation.

Unfairness in the justice system is a major theme of our age…this book brings new life to the story by placing it in two affecting contexts:

A searing, moving and infuriating memoir... …Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America’s Mandela. For decades he has fought judges, prosecutors and police on behalf of those who are impoverished, black or both… injustice is easy not to notice when it affects people different from ourselves; that helps explain the obliviousness of our own generation to inequity today. We need to wake up. And that is why we need a Mandela in this country. Read more...

Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Though larger than life, Atticus exists only in fiction. Bryan Stevenson, however, is very much alive and doing God’s work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story.