The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice. "Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the...

The former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York recounts captivating tales of true crime from his years atop the most storied prosecutor's office in the country--inside stories of terrorists threatening America, mob hit men, billion-dollar fraudsters, corrupt politicians, and even a "cannibal cop". Bharara entertains us, but also inspires us to aim high, laying out a path for how to think and act to reach fair and morally correct...

"A senior federal judge's incisive, unsettling exploration of some of the paradoxes that define the judiciary today: among them, why innocent people plead guilty, why high-level executives aren't prosecuted, why you won't get your day in court, and why the judiciary is curtailing its own constitutionally mandated power."--

"America likes to tell itself that it inhabits a postracial world, yet nearly every empirical measure-- wealth, unemployment, incarceration, school segregation-- reveals that racial inequality has barely improved since 1968, when Richard Nixon became our first 'law and order' president." Hayes examines the surge in crime that began in the 1960s and peaked in the 1990s, and the unprecedented decline that followed. Drawing on close-hand reporting at...

"An immersive tale of the killing of a Native American man and its far-reaching consequences for Colonial America. In the summer of 1722, on the eve of a conference between the Five Nations of the Iroquois and British-American colonists, two colonial fur traders brutally attacked an Indigenous hunter in colonial Pennsylvania. The crime set the entire mid-Atlantic on edge, with many believing that war was imminent. Frantic efforts to resolve the case...

"From the fearless defense attorney and civil rights lawyer who rose to fame with Netflix's The Staircase comes an essential examination of America's corrupt and abusive criminal justice system"--

As crime rates inexorably rose during the tumultuous years of the 1970s, disputes over how to handle the violence sweeping the nation quickly escalated. James Q. Wilson redefined the public debate by offering a brilliant and provocative new argument-;that criminal activity is largely rational and shaped by the rewards and penalties it offers-;and forever changed the way Americans think about crime. Now with a new foreword by the prominent scholar...

"Pfaff argues that existing accounts of the causes of mass incarceration are fundamentally misguided. The most widely accepted explanations--the failed War on Drugs, draconian sentencing laws, an increasing reliance on private prisons--actually tell us much less than we like to think. Instead, Pfaff urges us to look at other factors, including a major shift in prosecutor behavior that occurred in the mid-1990s, when prosecutors began bringing felony...