Posted by Meredith on Wednesday, Sep 16, 2015
The Iowa City Public Library will host a discussion about the 2015 One Community, One Book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 30, in Meeting Room A.
Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization providing legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.
One of Stevenson’s first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship — and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times,The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Esquire and Time, Just Mercy is the winner of the Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction, the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction and a Books for a Better Life Award.
One Community, One Book is a community-wide reading project. The book discussion, which will be led by the University of Iowa College of Law Associate Dean Emily Hughes, and Adrien Wing, Associate Dean for International and Comparative Law Programs at the University of Iowa and Director of the University of Iowa Center for Human Rights, coincides with ICPL’s 2015 Carol Spaziani Intellectual Freedom Festival.
For more information about this year’s Intellectual Freedom Festival, visit icpl.org/iff
For more information about the book discussion, contact the Library at 319-356-5200.