Reading List
Gilbert King
Journalist and Author
Gilbert King won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2013 for Devil in the Grove, which reconstructed Thurgood Marshall’s defence of the Groveland Boys, four young Black men accused of rape in 1949 Florida. He followed it with Beneath a Ruthless Sun, set in the same county, and hosts the podcast Bone Valley about a wrongful murder conviction. His reading is almost entirely books about crime, punishment and who the justice system is built to believe.
Shot in the Heart
by Mikal Gilmore · 1994 · Memoir
“In 1977, Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah, making him the first person executed in the U.S.” — via Article
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
by David Grann · 2017 · History
“Grann reconstructs the Osage murders of the 1920s and the birth of the FBI with investigative rigor” — via Article
Dead Man Walking
by Helen Prejean · 1993 · Memoir
“The book refuses easy answers yet never wavers in its humanity.” — via Article
Just Mercy
A Story of Justice and Redemption
by Bryan Stevenson · 2014 · Memoir
“When I need reminding why these stories matter, I return to this book.” — via Article
Wise Blood
by Flannery O'Connor · 1952 · Fiction
“This darkly comic tale of faith, fraud, and obsession feels both Southern Gothic and shockingly modern.” — via Article
All the King’s Men
by Robert Penn Warren · 1946 · Fiction
“The prose is musical, the moral vision unsparing.” — via Article