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Journalist Gilbert King is the author of Devil in the Grove, a Pulitzer Prize–winning 2012 account of a battle for justice led by Thurgood Marshall. King’s new book, Bone Valley, is adapted from his acclaimed podcast about a Florida man wrongly imprisoned for 36 years.
‘All the King’s Men’ by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
A sweeping American tragedy about power, corruption, and the cost of truth, following Willie Stark, a fictional populist governor, and the reporter chronicling Stark’s journey. The prose is musical, the moral vision unsparing. I reread it before starting a new project to reset my compass—and to remember that the bar for narrative ambition can be impossibly high. Buy it here.
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‘Wise Blood’ by Flannery O’Connor (1952)
This darkly comic tale of faith, fraud, and obsession feels both Southern Gothic and shockingly modern. Hazel Motes is one of literature’s great anti-prophets, raging at grace he can’t escape. Every line in this book counts. There’s no fat—just sharp, unforgettable writing. Buy it here.
‘Just Mercy’ by Bryan Stevenson (2014)
Stevenson’s memoir of building the Equal Justice Initiative is a master class in empathy and lawyering, centered on a wrongful 1988 murder conviction. It shows how systems fail—and how relentless care can bend them. When I need reminding why these stories matter, I return to this book. Buy it here.
‘Dead Man Walking’ by Sister Helen Prejean (1993)
With unsparing honesty, Prejean walks readers through death row, victims’ pain, and the moral wreckage of capital punishment. The book refuses easy answers yet never wavers in its humanity. Sister Helen’s calm persistence reminds me that listening itself can be a form of witness. Buy it here.
‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ by David Grann (2017)
Grann reconstructs the Osage murders of the 1920s and the birth of the FBI with investigative rigor and a storyteller’s precision. It’s a blueprint for revealing crimes hidden in plain sight. I took from it a lesson in endurance—how persistence can surface what others worked hard to erase. Buy it here.
‘Shot in the Heart’ by Mikal Gilmore (1994)
In 1977, Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah, making him the first person executed in the U.S. after the death penalty’s return. His brother Mikal’s memoir doesn’t dwell on Gary’s notoriety but on the human cost within their family—a reckoning I find unforgettable. Buy it here.
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