During the summer prior to the start of your first semester at SLU, incoming students are required to read a common book. This year’s selection is Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson.
You’ll get a free copy of SLU’s first-year reading book during SLU 101 summer orientation. All first-year students are required to read the book by Fall Welcome. It will be the topic of discussion then and in some of your classes during the fall semester. You’ll also have a chance to hear the author speak on campus in the fall.
First-year reading books are a shared intellectual experience. Each book selected:
- Provides opportunities for incoming students to talk with each other and with SLU’s faculty and staff.
- Addresses questions and life issues being faced by incoming students.
- Either implicitly or explicitly introduces you to academic life and the uniqueness of Jesuit higher education
- Are reflective of SLU’s mission.
About the Book
For the second year in a row, SLU’s 2017 first-year reading book is Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson. An unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted lawyer's coming of age and a moving narrative of the lives of those he has defended, the book is also an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his 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 Stevenson into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination and legal brinksmanship — and transformed his understanding of justice and mercy forever.
This year SLU will host Anthony Ray Hinton, a death row exoneree, who will share his
own story of wrongful conviction. Hinton will share his experience of survival on
Alabama's death row and decades-long journey to exoneration and freedom. In 1985,
Anthony Ray Hinton was convicted of the unsolved murders of two fast-food restaurant
managers based on the testimony of ballistics experts for the State
who claimed that the crime bullets came from a dusty revolver found in Mr. Hinton's
mother’s closet. Without the benefit of a competent expert to challenge the State’s
ballistics experts, an all-white jury convicted Mr. Hinton and he was sentenced to
death.
Following decades of petitioning to have the revolver re-analyzed, Mr. Hinton is now free and will join us at SLU's Center for Global Citizenship on Dec. 6, 2017 at 7 p.m. to share his story and discuss and the changes that need to be made to prevent these types of injustices from happening to other innocent people.
Past First-Year Reading Books
- 2016
Just Mercy : A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson - 2015
Outcasts United by Warren St. John - 2014
Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan - 2013
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle, S.J. - 2012
Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario - 2011
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka - 2010
Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation by Eboo Patel - 2009
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder - 2008
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace - One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin - 2006 and 2007
Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-year-old Company that Changed the World by Chris Lowney