Here are 100 books that Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System fans have personally recommended if you like
Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System.
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Journalism and history have been my dual obsessions since high school, and my work for the past 13 years has focused on the intersection between them. The pressures of journalism, its tremendous impact, and the extraordinary characters who tend to be drawn to the profession are endlessly fascinating to me. In my time as a PhD student, professor, researcher, and book review editor for an academic journal, I have read hundreds of books about American journalism and its past (maybe over 1,000 now that I think about it, but I haven’t kept count!). I’ve also reviewed several for the Washington Post. These are some of my favorites.
I’ve read a lot of journalism memoirs, but I love this one because it is unapologetically a book for journalism junkies. Hersh—arguably the greatest investigative reporter of the past century—is matter-of-fact and unsentimental as he looks back on his impressive career.
It’s all about the work: the incredible lengths to which you need to go to expose the damaging secrets that powerful people want to keep hidden. Reading his account of how he got the story of the My Lai Massacre, my jaw was open the entire time in near-disbelief.
'Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. Essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over' John le Carre
In the early 1950s, teenage Seymour Hersh was finishing high school and university - while running the family's struggling dry cleaning store in a Southside Chicago ghetto. Today, he is one of America's premier investigative journalists, whose fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every newspaper in the world, a staggering collection of awards, and no…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I have spent most of my professional life trying to understand why the criminal justice system so often gets things wrong. For twenty-five years, I served as Director of the California Innocence Project and helped free innocent people from prison, including individuals serving life sentences and facing execution. Along the way, I became fascinated not only by wrongful convictions themselves, but by the larger cultural forces that shape how societies think about crime, punishment, race, fear, and justice. The books on this list deeply influenced both my work and my understanding of the human beings trapped inside the system. They are the books I return to when I want to remember why this work matters.
I love this book because Bryan Stevenson combines moral clarity with genuine compassion, even for people who have done terrible things.
As someone who has spent decades working on wrongful convictions, I recognized so much of the emotional reality in these pages, the exhaustion, the small victories, the moments that restore your faith in humanity, and the crushing setbacks. What stayed with me most was Stevenson’s refusal to reduce anyone to the worst thing they had ever done. I think that perspective is desperately needed in modern discussions about crime and punishment.
This is one of the rare books that can genuinely change the way a reader sees both the legal system and the people trapped inside it.
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN, JAMIE FOXX, AND BRIE LARSON.
A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, ESQUIRE, AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR.
A #1 New York Times bestseller, this is a powerful, true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix America's broken justice system, as seen in the HBO documentary True Justice.
The US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. One in every 15 people born there today is expected to go to prison. For black men this figure…
I am a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has worked for the past 10 years as the senior researcher for the National Registry of Exonerations. In that capacity, I have written nearly 2,500 individual accounts of men and women and teenagers who were wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit. Some of them were sentenced to death. I have seen and written about these tragedies firsthand.
This is the true first person account of Illinois Governor George Ryan’s courageous and unprecedented decision to suspend the death penalty and empty death row in 2003. He oversaw the state’s last execution, an experience that was seared in his brain. In 2000, he became the first governor (and a Republican at that) to impose a moratorium on the death penalty. I was there as a journalist and I helped him write this powerful memoir.
In January 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions-the first such action by any governor in the history of the United States.
Despite a long history as a death penalty proponent, Ryan was emotionally moved after allowing an execution in 1999. He was also profoundly disturbed by the state's history-12 men had been executed and 13 had been exonerated since the return of the death penalty in Illinois in 1977. More had been proven innocent than had been executed.
Three years later, in 2003, Ryan pardoned four death row inmates based on their actual innocence and then…
Separating the true stories from the myths, The Duty of Memory provides a deeper understanding of the diverse motivations that drove ordinary people to join an underground network of French Resistants despite terrible odds and horrifying consequences.
This book takes the reader inside the true story of men and women…
I am a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who has worked for the past 10 years as the senior researcher for the National Registry of Exonerations. In that capacity, I have written nearly 2,500 individual accounts of men and women and teenagers who were wrongly convicted of crimes they did not commit. Some of them were sentenced to death. I have seen and written about these tragedies firsthand.
Phoebe Zerwick has written an evocative account of the disturbing wrongful conviction and ultimate tragedy of Darryl Hunt in North Carolina. I personally know Phoebe and I am familiar with the story. It is a riveting account of how the criminal justice system can and does go awry with deadly consequences.
A deeply reported, gripping narrative of injustice, exoneration, and the lifelong impact of incarceration, Beyond Innocence is the poignant saga of one remarkable life that sheds vitally important light on the failures of the American justice system at every level
In June 1985, a young Black man in Winston-Salem, N.C. named Darryl Hunt was falsely convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a white copyeditor at the local paper. Many in the community believed him innocent and crusaded for his release even as subsequent trials and appeals reinforced his sentence. Finally, in 2003, the…
I’ve written about, taught, and litigated wrongful conviction cases for decades. As Director and Co-Founder of the California Innocence Project, I was able to walk 40 innocent people out of prison. I’m proud to have been part of a small group of lawyers who started innocence organizations in the 1990s. That small group has now turned into a global movement. Free the innocents!
I love this book because it is incredibly educational about the problem of wrongful convictions in baby death cases, but at the same time, that education is wrapped around the ordeal of a young woman caught up in a wrongful conviction.
I have litigated baby death cases, and I know the circle of heartbreak around them. Audrey Edmunds captures that heartbreak as we follow her on her journey from a daycare provider on a normal day to prison for 11 years to freedom.
Audrey Edmunds was a happily married young mother of two with a baby on the way; the neighborhood soccer mom in a small Wisconsin town providing casual childcare when the unthinkable happened. An infant died in her care at the same time the unknown science of Shaken Baby Syndrome hit the media. Swept up in a media frenzy, Edmunds was accused of killing the child through SBS. She was stripped from her children and husband and sent to prison where she would fight for freedom 13 years before she was finally exonerated after updated science showed her innocence. Audrey was…
I don’t know when I became aware of and bothered by racial inequality but looking back, I see touchstones that lighted my path even before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech stiffened my spine in middle school. I participated in sit-ins at lunch counters and sat in the back of buses. Even though I was a white kid in a predominately white school, it became personal to me. The injustice and unfairness of prejudice and discrimination was the antithesis of what I believed was the promise of America. In recent years, the quiet background noise of racial inequity has amplified to an ugly level. I recommend these books as a start to understanding and rectifying the current unacceptable situation.
A riveting true story about a freed slave and a confederate soldier who fought for justice in the Jim Crow South. The freed slave became the first man to beat a lynch mob in court. His small blow to racism made him a hero but one few know. I cried at his setbacks and cheered for every small victory along the way. Once I started reading, I could not put it down.
After moonrise on the cold night of January 21, 1897, a mob of twenty five white men gathered in a patch of woods near Big Road in southwestern Simpson County, Kentucky. Half carried rifles and shotguns, and a few tucked pistols in their pants. Their target? George Dinning, a freed slave who'd farmed peacefully in the area for 14 years, and had been wrongfully accused of stealing livestock from a neighboring farm. When the mob began firing through the doors and windows of Dinning's house, he fired back in self-defense, shooting and killing the son of a wealthy Kentucky family.
What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?
The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…
I had the passion to write Necessary Deeds because: 1) as someone who'd spent 20+ years writing novels, dealing with untrustworthy literary agents, and book-doctoring other writers’ novels in order to pay rent, I'd come to know betrayal (“best friend” writers who stole drafts of mine and called them their own, novelists who backstabbed me after I helped them land agents and book contracts, and so on); 2) like many people who lived through the drug-and-alcohol-laced Eighties, I had a long relationship with someone that ended because they cheated on me. So I never doubted that, as I wrote Necessary Deeds, my heart knew well what motivated its characters.
Much as I enjoyed the film based on this novella by Stephen King (which I now understand is a standalone book—I read it as part of a story collection long ago), I enjoyed the novella more.
Why? Because of its extraordinarily likeable narrative voice, which has caused people worldwide to find themselves rooting for its narrator. How can you not want to know what’ll happen next to someone so candid and down-to-earth—who has experienced homicide and love so intensely? Especially when he wants intimacy yet also feels threatened by it.
In fact, just after I finished reading the Shawshank novella, I vowed to write a novel about someone in NYC who exuded those same attributes: candor, humility, and understated yet solid wisdom about murder and affairs of the heart. And after several years of writing with this goal, I finally tapped into the voice of Matt Connell, the narrator of…
The No. 1 bestselling author Stephen King's beloved novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption - the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption - about an unjustly imprisoned convict who seeks a strangely satisfying revenge, is now available as a standalone book.
There's a guy like me in every state and federal prison in America, I guess - I'm the guy who can get it for you.
And new convict Andy Dufresne wants two things from fellow prisoner Red: a small rock-hammer for carving stones and a giant poster of Rita Hayworth.
I am an author of history books as well as children’s fiction. My books for Pen and Sword Publishing tell the stories of the places associated with Henry VIII, and with the Princes in the Tower, the boys who mysteriously disappeared from the Tower of London during the reign of King Richard III. So it was obvious that I should use my passion for late medieval and Tudor history when it came to deciding on a setting for my first children’s book; The Secret in the Tower is set during Henry Tudor’s invasion and his assumption of the English throne. I hope readers enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it!
I liked this book as it provides an insight into the reign of Henry VIII, the most famous Tudor monarch, from a child’s perspective – particularly the intrigues that dominated his court and could often prove deadly.
Will Montague is a page to Prince Edward, Henry’s son, and finds that his father, a victim of those court intrigues, has been thrown into prison for committing treason.
He joins up with Nick, a boy from the poverty-stricken streets of London, to prove his father’s innocence and set him free – on the way, providing readers with an insight into how the poor lived in Tudor times, as well as the more fortunate. The adventure the two boys embark on takes them all the way to Calais, which at that time was an English possession in France.
Adventure, friendship, treason and betrayal. A dazzling historical novel from the award-winning Berlie Doherty.
Will Montague is a page to Prince Edward, son of King Henry VIII. As the King's favourite, Will gains many enemies in Court. His enemies convince the King that Will's father has committed treason and he is thrown into Newgate Prison. Will flees Hampton Court and goes into hiding in the back streets of London. Lost and in mortal danger, he is rescued by a poor boy, Nick Drew. Together they must brave imprisonment and death as they embark on a great adventure to set Will's…
I am an educator, cook, lover of rooftops and nature. In 2017, a series of extraordinary events brought me to Oswego, New York to speak about my debut YA novel, Hello?. With time to spare, I scrolled through Facebook and saw, “Homework? NY Students Debate Exterminating Jews.” Where was the assignment given? Oswego! And surprise, at my book signing, I met one of the two brave teens who protested the debate. These experiences spurred The Assignment’s journey. Speaking up against bigotry, hatred, and injustice is a life-long quest of learning, action, and sharing knowledge. I hope you’ll join me. These books are a great start.
When Tracy Beaumont’s father is convicted for a murder he didn’t commit, she refuses to accept the verdict. Her unwavering determination to fight the long-standing racism in her small town shows the depth of its hateful history and its horrific impact on her father and family. This unforgettable, heartbreaking, and hopeful novel provides a mirror and window into the courage needed to fight against injustice.
"Incredible and searing." --Nic Stone, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin
The Hate U Give meets Just Mercy in this unflinching yet uplifting first novel that explores the racist injustices in the American justice system.
Every week, seventeen-year-old Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X, asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time--her dad has only 267 days left. Then the unthinkable happens. The police arrive in the night, and Tracy's older brother, Jamal, goes from being a bright, promising track star…
Pioneer Paddles of the Colonial South
by
William D. Auman,
Award-winning novelist William Auman, author of If Trees Could Testify..., takes the reader on a time-traveling odyssey featuring 345 bodies of water in six states within the historical context through which they unfold.
Journey into remaining Colonial-era wilderness with stories of pirate treasure, epic frontiersmen, Indigenous Peoples, and Revolutionary…
People experiencing intimate partner and other forms of violence have been taught that police, prosecutors, and courts are there to respond when they are harmed and to keep them safe. But in my practice representing survivors of gender-based violence, I have both heard about and witnessed first-hand the many ways that the criminal system punishes the survivors that it promised to protect. Survivors are harassed, harmed, and arrested by police. Their experiences of trauma are minimized and denied by prosecutors and judges. They are held criminally responsible for acting in self-defense and for the actions of the people who abuse them.
When Kim Williams overdosed, Leigh Stubbs and Tami Vance sought help and performed CPR on her until paramedics arrived and took her to the hospital. The doctors who examined Kim said that she had been sexually assaulted. Police focused on Leigh and Tami, mainly, if not exclusively, because they were lesbians.
Leigh and Tami were wrongfully convicted of the assault and sentenced to 44 years in prison. Beety, an innocence litigator, highlights how medical malpractice, unscientific expert testimony, prosecutorial misconduct, problematic judicial rulings, and, above all, homophobia led to Leigh and Tami’s (and other manifestly unjust) convictions.
Through the lens of her work with the Innocence Movement and her client Leigh Stubbs—a woman denied a fair trial in 2000 largely due to her sexual orientation—innocence litigator, activist, and founder of the West Virginia Innocence Project Valena Beety examines the failures in America's criminal legal system and the reforms necessary to eliminate wrongful convictions—particularly with regards to women, the queer community, and people of color...
When Valena Beety first became a federal prosecutor, her goal was to protect victims, especially women, from cycles of violence. What she discovered was that not only did prosecutions often fail to help…
