Just Mercy
About this book
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is a memoir by Bryan Stevenson that documents his career as a lawyer for disadvantaged clients. The book, focusing on injustices in the United States judicial system, alternates chapters between documenting Stevenson's efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian and his work on other cases, including children who receive life sentences and other poor or marginalized clients.
Initially published by Spiegel & Grau, then an imprint of Penguin Random House, on 21 October 2014 in hardcover and digital formats and by Random House Audio in audiobook format read by Stevenson, a paperback edition was released on 16 August 2015 by Penguin Random House and a young adult adaptation was published by Delacorte Press on 18 September 2018. The memoir was later adapted into a 2019 movie of the same name by Destin Daniel Cretton and, commemorating the film, "Movie Tie-In" editions were released for both versions of the memoir on 3 December 2019 by imprints of Penguin Random House.
The memoir has received many honors and won multiple non-fiction book awards. It was a New York Times best seller and spent more than 230 weeks on the paperback nonfiction best sellers list. It won the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, given annually by the American Library Association. Stevenson's acceptance speech for the award, given at the Library Association's annual meeting, was said to be the best that many of the librarians had ever heard, and was published with acclaim by Publishers Weekly. The book was also awarded the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction and the 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Nonfiction. It was named one of "10 of the decade's most influential books" in December 2019 by CNN.
Subjects
- administration
- administration of criminal justice
- autobiographies
- avocats
- biographies
- biography
- criminal justice, administration of
- criminal law
- criminal law, united states
- discrimination in criminal justice administration
- eighth amendment to the united states constitution
- equal justice initiative
- false imprisonment
- judicial error
- jurist
- jurists
- justice
- justice, administration of
- justice pénale
- law
- law - criminal law - sentencing
- lawyers
- lawyers, biography
- legal assistance to the poor
- memoirs
- miller v. alabama
- new york times bestseller
- new york times reviewed
- nyt:crime-and-punishment=2014-10-12
- penology
- political science
- political science - public policy - general
- popular works
- public defenders
- public interest law
- public policy
- rassismus
- réformateurs sociaux
- reformers
- sentences (criminal procedure)
- sentencing
- social reformers
- social science
- social science - penology
- southern center for human rights
- strafverfolgung
- supreme court of the united states
- todesstrafe
- umschulungswerkstätten für siedler und auswanderer
- united states, biography, juvenile literature