Locking Up Our Own

This superb, shattering book probably made a deeper impression on me than any other this year - New York Times

A beautiful book, written so well, that gives us the origins and consequences of where we are … I can see why [the Pulitzer prize] was awarded - The Daily Show

Remarkable … Forman’s beautifully written narrative, enriched by firsthand knowledge of the cops and courts, neither condemns black leaders in hindsight nor exonerates the white-dominated institutions … He adds historical nuance to the story of ‘mass incarceration’ told in … The New Jim Crow - Washington Post

Eloquent … A gritty, often revelatory work of local history, interspersed with tales of Forman’s experiences as a public defender … Locking Up Our Own is a sobering chronicle of how black people, in the hope of saving their communities, contributed to the rise of a system that has undone much of the progress of the civil rights era. But, as Forman knows, they could not have built it by themselves, and they are even less likely to be able to abolish it without influential white allies, and dramatic reforms in the structure of American society - London Review of Books