Promotions apply when you purchase
These promotions will be applied to this item:
Some promotions may be combined; others are not eligible to be combined with other offers. For details, please see the Terms & Conditions associated with these promotions.
Audiobook Price: $15.75 $15.75
Save: $7.26 $7.26 (46%)
Buying and sending ebooks to others.
These ebooks can only be redeemed by recipients in the US. Redemption links and eBooks cannot be resold.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
From school library journal, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..
Chapter One
Mockingbird Players
The temporary receptionist was an elegant African American woman wearing a dark, expensive business suit—a well-dressed exception to the usual crowd at the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC) in Atlanta, where I had returned after graduation to work full time. On her first day, I’d rambled over to her in my regular uniform of jeans and sneakers and offered to answer any questions she might have to help her get acclimated. She looked at me coolly and waved me away after reminding me that she was, in fact, an experienced legal secretary. The next morning, when I arrived at work in another jeans and sneakers ensemble, she seemed startled, as if some strange vagrant had made a wrong turn into the office. She took a beat to compose herself, then summoned me over to confide that she was leaving in a week to work at a “real law office.” I wished her luck. An hour later, she called my office to tell me that “Robert E. Lee” was on the phone. I smiled, pleased that I’d misjudged her; she clearly had a sense of humor.
“That’s really funny.”
“I’m not joking. That’s what he said,” she said, sounding bored, not playful. “Line two.”
I picked up the line.
“Hello, this is Bryan Stevenson. May I help you?”
“Bryan, this is Robert E. Lee Key. Why in the hell would you want to represent someone like Walter McMillian? Do you know he’s reputed to be one of the biggest drug dealers in all of South Alabama? I got your notice entering an appearance, but you don’t want anything to do with this case.”
“This is Judge Key, and you don’t want to have anything to do with this McMillian case. No one really understands how depraved this situation truly is, including me, but I know it’s ugly. These men might even be Dixie Mafia.”
The lecturing tone and bewildering phrases from a judge I’d never met left me completely confused. “Dixie Mafia”? I’d met Walter McMillian two weeks earlier, after spending a day on death row to begin work on five capital cases. I hadn’t reviewed the trial transcript yet, but I did remember that the judge’s last name was Key. No one had told me the Robert E. Lee part. I struggled for an image of “Dixie Mafia” that would fit Walter McMillian.
“ ‘Dixie Mafia’?”
“Yes, and there’s no telling what else. Now, son, I’m just not going to appoint some out-of-state lawyer who’s not a member of the Alabama bar to take on one of these death penalty cases, so you just go ahead and withdraw.”
“I’m a member of the Alabama bar.”
I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, but I had been admitted to the Alabama bar a year earlier after working on some cases in Alabama concerning jail and prison conditions.
“Well, I’m now sitting in Mobile. I’m not up in Monroeville anymore. If we have a hearing on your motion, you’re going to have to come all the way from Atlanta to Mobile. I’m not going to accommodate you no kind of way.”
“I understand, sir. I can come to Mobile, if necessary.”
“Well, I’m also not going to appoint you because I don’t think he’s indigent. He’s reported to have money buried all over Monroe County.”
“Judge, I’m not seeking appointment. I’ve told Mr. McMillian that we would—” The dial tone interrupted my first affirmative statement of the phone call. I spent several minutes thinking we’d been accidentally disconnected before finally realizing that a judge had just hung up on me.
I was in my late twenties and about to start my fourth year at the SPDC when I met Walter McMillian. His case was one of the flood of cases I’d found myself frantically working on after learning of a growing crisis in Alabama. The state had nearly a hundred people on death row as well as the fastest-growing condemned population in the country, but it also had no public defender system, which meant that large numbers of death row prisoners had no legal representation of any kind. My friend Eva Ansley ran the Alabama Prison Project, which tracked cases and matched lawyers with the condemned men. In 1988, we discovered an opportunity to get federal funding to create a legal center that could represent people on death row. The plan was to use that funding to start a new nonprofit. We hoped to open it in Tuscaloosa and begin working on cases in the next year. I’d already worked on lots of death penalty cases in several Southern states, sometimes winning a stay of execution just minutes before an electrocution was scheduled. But I didn’t think I was ready to take on the responsibilities of running a nonprofit law office. I planned to help get the organization off the ground, find a director, and then return to Atlanta.
When I’d visited death row a few weeks before that call from Robert E. Lee Key, I met with five desperate condemned men: Willie Tabb, Vernon Madison, Jesse Morrison, Harry Nicks, and Walter McMillian. It was an exhausting, emotionally taxing day, and the cases and clients had merged together in my mind on the long drive back to Atlanta. But I remembered Walter. He was at least fifteen years older than me, not particularly well educated, and he hailed from a small rural community. The memorable thing about him was how insistent he was that he’d been wrongly convicted.
“Mr. Bryan, I know it may not matter to you, but it’s important to me that you know that I’m innocent and didn’t do what they said I did, not no kinda way,” he told me in the meeting room. His voice was level but laced with emotion. I nodded to him. I had learned to accept what clients tell me until the facts suggest something else.
“Sure, of course I understand. When I review the record I’ll have a better sense of what evidence they have, and we can talk about it.”
“But . . . look, I’m sure I’m not the first person on death row to tell you that they’re innocent, but I really need you to believe me. My life has been ruined! This lie they put on me is more than I can bear, and if I don’t get help from someone who believes me—”
His lip began to quiver, and he clenched his fists to stop himself from crying. I sat quietly while he forced himself back into composure.
“I’m sorry, I know you’ll do everything you can to help me,” he said, his voice quieter. My instinct was to comfort him; his pain seemed so sincere. But there wasn’t much I could do, and after several hours on the row talking to so many people, I could muster only enough energy to reassure him that I would look at everything carefully.
I had several transcripts piled up in my small Atlanta office ready to move to Tuscaloosa once the office opened. With Judge Robert E. Lee Key’s peculiar comments still running through my head, I went through the mound of records until I found the transcripts from Walter McMillian’s trial. There were only four volumes of trial proceedings, which meant that the trial had been short. The judge’s dramatic warnings now made Mr. McMillian’s emotional claim of innocence too intriguing to put off any longer. I started reading.
Even though he had lived in Monroe County his whole life, Walter McMillian had never heard of Harper Lee or To Kill a Mockingbird. Monroeville, Alabama, celebrated its native daughter Lee shamelessly after her award-winning book became a national bestseller in the 1960s. She returned to Monroe County but secluded herself and was rarely seen in public. Her reclusiveness proved no barrier to the county’s continued efforts to market her literary classic—or to market itself by using the book’s celebrity. Production of the film adaptation brought Gregory Peck to town for the infamous courtroom scenes; his performance won him an Academy Award. Local leaders later turned the old courthouse into a “Mockingbird” museum. A group of locals formed “The Mockingbird Players of Monroeville” to present a stage version of the story. The production was so popular that national and international tours were organized to provide an authentic presentation of the fictional story to audiences everywhere.
Sentimentality about Lee’s story grew even as the harder truths of the book took no root. The story of an innocent black man bravely defended by a white lawyer in the 1930s fascinated millions of readers, despite its uncomfortable exploration of false accusations of rape involving a white woman. Lee’s endearing characters, Atticus Finch and his precocious daughter Scout, captivated readers while confronting them with some of the realities of race and justice in the South. A generation of future lawyers grew up hoping to become the courageous Atticus, who at one point arms himself to protect the defenseless black suspect from an angry mob of white men looking to lynch him.
Today, dozens of legal organizations hand out awards in the fictional lawyer’s name to celebrate the model of advocacy described in Lee’s novel. What is often overlooked is that the black man falsely accused in the story was not successfully defended by Atticus. Tom Robinson, the wrongly accused black defendant, is found guilty. Later he dies when, full of despair, he makes a desperate attempt to escape from prison. He is shot seventeen times in the back by his captors, dying ingloriously but not unlawfully.
Walter McMillian, like Tom Robinson, grew up in one of several poor black settlements outside of Monroeville, where he worked the fields with his family before he was old enough to attend school. The children of sharecroppers in southern Alabama were introduced to “plowin’, plantin’, and pickin’ ” as soon as they were old enough to be useful in the fields. Educational opportunities for black children in the 1950s were limited, but Walter’s mother got him to the dilapidated “colored school” for a couple of years when he was young. By the time Walter was eight or nine, he became too valuable for picking cotton to justify the remote advantages of going to school. By the age of eleven, Walter could run a plow as well as any of his older siblings.
Times were changing—for better and for worse. Monroe County had been developed by plantation owners in the nineteenth century for the production of cotton. Situated in the coastal plain of southwest Alabama, the fertile, rich black soil of the area attracted white settlers from the Carolinas who amassed very successful plantations and a huge slave population. For decades after the Civil War, the large African American population toiled in the fields of the “Black Belt” as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, dependent on white landowners for survival. In the 1940s, thousands of African Americans left the region as part of the Great Migration and headed mostly to the Midwest and West Coast for jobs. Those who remained continued to work the land, but the out-migration of African Americans combined with other factors to make traditional agriculture less sustainable as the economic base of the region.
By the 1950s, small cotton farming was becoming increasingly less profitable, even with the low-wage labor provided by black sharecroppers and tenants. The State of Alabama agreed to help white landowners in the region transition to timber farming and forest products by providing extraordinary tax incentives for pulp and paper mills. Thirteen of the state’s sixteen pulp and paper mills were opened during this period. Across the Black Belt, more and more acres were converted to growing pine trees for paper mills and industrial uses. African Americans, largely excluded from this new industry, found themselves confronting new economic challenges even as they won basic civil rights. The brutal era of sharecropping and Jim Crow was ending, but what followed was persistent unemployment and worsening poverty. The region’s counties remained some of the poorest in America.
Walter was smart enough to see the trend. He started his own pulpwood business that evolved with the timber industry in the 1970s. He astutely—and bravely—borrowed money to buy his own power saw, tractor, and pulpwood truck. By the 1980s, he had developed a solid business that didn’t generate a lot of extra money but afforded him a gratifying degree of independence. If he had worked at the mill or the factory or had had some other unskilled job—the kind that most poor black people in South Alabama worked—it would invariably mean working for white business owners and dealing with all the racial stress that that implied in Alabama in the 1970s and 1980s. Walter couldn’t escape the reality of racism, but having his own business in a growing sector of the economy gave him a latitude that many African Americans did not enjoy.
That independence won Walter some measure of respect and admiration, but it also cultivated contempt and suspicion, especially outside of Monroeville’s black community. Walter’s freedom was, for some of the white people in town, well beyond what African Americans with limited education were able to achieve through legitimate means. Still, he was pleasant, respectful, generous, and accommodating, which made him well liked by the people with whom he did business, whether black or white.
Walter was not without his flaws. He had long been known as a ladies’ man. Even though he had married young and had three children with his wife, Minnie, it was well known that he was romantically involved with other women. “Tree work” is notoriously demanding and dangerous. With few ordinary comforts in his life, the attention of women was something Walter did not easily resist. There was something about his rough exterior—his bushy long hair and uneven beard—combined with his generous and charming nature that attracted the attention of some women.
Walter grew up understanding how forbidden it was for a black man to be intimate with a white woman, but by the 1980s he had allowed himself to imagine that such matters might be changing. Perhaps if he hadn’t been successful enough to live off his own business he would have more consistently kept in mind those racial lines that could never be crossed. As it was, Walter didn’t initially think much of the flirtations of Karen Kelly, a young white woman he’d met at the Waffle House where he ate breakfast. She was attractive, but he didn’t take her too seriously. When her flirtations became more explicit, Walter hesitated, and then persuaded himself that no one would ever know.
After a few weeks, it became clear that his relationship with Karen was trouble. At twenty-five, Karen was eighteen years younger than Walter, and she was married. As word got around that the two were “friends,” she seemed to take a titillating pride in her intimacy with Walter. When her husband found out, things quickly turned ugly. Karen and her husband, Joe, had long been unhappy and were already planning to divorce, but her scandalous involvement with a black man outraged Karen’s husband and his entire family. He initiated legal proceedings to gain custody of their children and became intent on publicly disgracing his wife by exposing her infidelity and revealing her relationship with a black man.
For his part, Walter had always stayed clear of the courts and far away from the law. Years earlier, he had been drawn into a bar fight that resulted in a misdemeanor conviction and a night in jail. It was the first and only time he had ever been in trouble. From that point on, he had no exposure to the criminal justice system.
When Walter received a subpoena from Karen Kelly’s husband to testify at a hearing where the Kellys would be fighting over their children’s custody, he knew it was going to cause him serious problems. Unable to consult with his wife, Minnie, who had a better head for these kinds of crises, he nervously went to the courthouse. The lawyer for Kelly’s husband called Walter to the stand. Walter had decided to acknowledge being a “friend” of Karen. Her lawyer objected to the crude questions posed to Walter by the husband’s attorney about the nature of his friendship, sparing him from providing any details, but when he left the courtroom the anger and animosity toward him were palpable. Walter wanted to forget about the whole ordeal, but word spread quickly, and his reputation shifted. No longer the hard-working pulpwood man, known to white people almost exclusively for what he could do with a saw in the pine trees, Walter now represented something more worrisome.
Fears of interracial sex and marriage have deep roots in the United States. The confluence of race and sex was a powerful force in dismantling Reconstruction after the Civil War, sustaining Jim Crow laws for a century and fueling divisive racial politics throughout the twentieth century. In the aftermath of slavery, the creation of a system of racial hierarchy and segregation was largely designed to prevent intimate relationships like Walter and Karen’s—relationships that were, in fact, legally prohibited by “anti-miscegenation statutes” (the word miscegenation came into use in the 1860s, when supporters of slavery coined the term to promote the fear of interracial sex and marriage and the race mixing that would result if slavery were abolished). For over a century, law enforcement officials in many Southern communities absolutely saw it as part of their duty to investigate and punish black men who had been intimate with white women.
Although the federal government had promised racial equality for freed former slaves during the short period of Reconstruction, the return of white supremacy and racial subordination came quickly after federal troops left Alabama in the 1870s. Voting rights were taken away from African Americans, and a series of racially restrictive laws enforced the racial hierarchy. “Racial integrity” laws were part of a plan to replicate slavery’s racial hierarchy and reestablish the subordination of African Americans. Having criminalized interracial sex and marriage, states throughout the South would use the laws to justify the forced sterilization of poor and minority women. Forbidding sex between white women and black men became an intense preoccupation throughout the South.
In the 1880s, a few years before lynching became the standard response to interracial romance and a century before Walter and Karen Kelly began their affair, Tony Pace, an African American man, and Mary Cox, a white woman, fell in love in Alabama. They were arrested and convicted, and both were sentenced to two years in prison for violating Alabama’s racial integrity laws. John Tompkins, a lawyer and part of a small minority of white professionals who considered the racial integrity laws to be unconstitutional, agreed to represent Tony and Mary to appeal their convictions. The Alabama Supreme Court reviewed the case in 1882. With rhetoric that would be quoted frequently over the next several decades, Alabama’s highest court affirmed the convictions, using language that dripped with contempt for the idea of interracial romance:
The evil tendency of the crime [of adultery or fornication] is greater when committed between persons of the two races. . . . Its result may be the amalgamation of the two races, producing a mongrel population and a degraded civilization, the prevention of which is dictated by a sound policy affecting the highest interests of society and government.
Click to play video
Merchant Video
Bryan stevenson.
Bryan Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, and a professor of law at New York University Law School. He has won relief for dozens of condemned prisoners, argued five times before the Supreme Court, and won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color. He has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant.
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Customers find the emotional tone inspiring, devastating, and deeply personal. They also say the content is inspiring, sobering, and excellent at breaking down complexities. Readers describe the plot as compelling, gripping, and humorous. They describe the book as well-written, revitalizing, never a waste of time, and an excellent reminder of racial inequities.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book's content eye-opening, transformative, and engrossing. They also say the author's passion, selflessness, and commitment to justice is inspiring. Readers also say it does a great job breaking down the complexities of the legal system into parts anyone can understand. They say it shines a light into places that many people have never been.
"This is such a powerful book, one that is both heartbreaking and inspiring , one that makes you feel both hope and despair...." Read more
"...“Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving...." Read more
"...He does a great job of breaking down the complexities of the legal system into parts anyone can understand...." Read more
" One of the more interesting , telling, and memorable books read. It will be on my bookshelf forever...." Read more
Customers find the book well-written, masterful, and moving. They also appreciate the author's artful storytelling and accessible language. Readers also mention that the book is never a waste of time.
"...It is written in simple , accessible language and although it’s categorized as a memoir, Stevenson spends little time on the book talking about..." Read more
"...Overall, it was a really great read that challenged my assumptions of death row and our legal system." Read more
"One of the more interesting, telling, and memorable books read . It will be on my bookshelf forever...." Read more
"...Stevenson is very declamatory with his writing style , with an idiomatic approach, which can appeal to all types of readers...." Read more
Customers find the book emotional, thought-provoking, and heartbreaking. They also say the author inspires empathy by connecting the reader to the places on earth. Readers also appreciate the author's selflessness and commitment to justice. They say the writing is direct and the author does a great job sharing his personal experiences. They mention that the book includes deeply personal accounts of those who have lived and not.
"This is such a powerful book, one that is both heartbreaking and inspiring, one that makes you feel both hope and despair...." Read more
"...“ Mercy is most empowering , liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving...." Read more
"The author does a great job of sharing his personal , emotional experiences of defending prisoners on death row...." Read more
"...who possessed all the qualities we all need to develope , humi!ity, compassion , kindness , mercy and love...." Read more
Customers find the plot compelling, gripping, and fascinating. They also say the book gives them hope and is worth the emotional investment. Customers also mention that the author is humorous and compassionate.
"...one that is both heartbreaking and inspiring, one that makes you feel both hope and despair ...." Read more
"...make you mad, but by the end it'll also leave you with a sense of hope and optimism , after you learn how activists like Stevenson are tirelessly..." Read more
"...His vast array of personal anecdotes and gut enthralling stories glue readers to the pages...." Read more
"... Well-told stories seize the reader ’s heart and won’t let go, stories like Walter McMillan, exonerated after having spent 6 years on death row for a..." Read more
Customers find the characters in the book extraordinary, amazing, and dedicated. They also describe the book as interesting and vivid, and praise the author as a true role model for both men and women. Readers also mention that the actors did a phenomenal job.
"... His thoughts are crisp and innovative , allowing our eyes to see the justice system in a new light, and in many instances through the shoes of the..." Read more
"...The first is Bryan. He is remarkable --- his energy, passion, selflessness and commitment to justice is inspiring --- and his ability to maintain..." Read more
"...Stevenson makes it interesting by using descriptions of characters that bring the story to life in vivid detail...." Read more
"...A great book and an amazing human being ." Read more
Customers find the book very moving, frustrating, and redeeming. They also say it's intense and flows like a river.
"A tremendously moving account of one innocent man's desperate fight to escape state-sanctioned execution for a crime he didn't commit, "Just Mercy:..." Read more
"This book is a very moving and informative account of Attorney Stevenson's work on behalf of inmates on death row in the American South, primarily,..." Read more
"This book was well-written and extremely moving ...." Read more
"A very moving book . I learned quite a bit. We need more people like Bryan Stevenson! The movie only touches the surface." Read more
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..
Watch CBS News
By Aimee Picchi
Edited By Anne Marie Lee
Updated on: August 20, 2024 / 9:05 AM EDT / CBS News
There's some bad news ahead for the nation's car owners, with a new report forecasting that auto insurance — one of the biggest drivers of inflation this year — will continue to rise in 2024. In fact, residents of three states could see their coverage rates spike by 50% in 2024.
That's according to a new report from Insurify, a company that provides data about auto insurance rates. The typical U.S. insurance policy will jump 22% this year to an average annual premium of $2,469 by year-end, the report found. That comes after drivers saw their policies jump 24% in 2023, it noted.
The three states where insurance rates could jump by more than 50% this year are California, Minnesota and Missouri, the Insurify report found. Drivers in those states could see their rates rise by 54%, 61% and 55%, respectively.
Auto insurance remains a pain point for consumers after experiencing more than two years of elevated inflation. And even as the overall inflation rate is cooling — the Consumer Price Index dropped to 2.9% in July , the first time since March 2021 it's dropped below 3% — drivers are continuing to see their policy rates rev up, fueled by more climate events that are causing vehicle damage.
"Increasingly severe and frequent weather events are driving up auto insurance premiums," Insurify said in its report. "Hail-related auto claims represented 11.8% of all comprehensive claims in 2023, up from 9% in 2020, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions."
Drivers in Maryland currently pay the highest average rate, at $3,400, for annual full coverage as of June, the Insurify analysis found. Their rates are projected to jump 41% to $3,748 by year-end compared with the state's 2023 rates, it noted. The second most expensive state is South Carolina, with an average policy premium of $3,336 in June. That could rise by 38% to $3,687 by the end of the year versus its 2023 rates.
As CBS News has reported, there are a few additional reasons, aside from climate events, that are driving up auto rates — even if your driving record hasn't changed.
First, the costs paid by insurance providers to repair vehicles after an accident, such as for labor and parts, have increased more than 40%, and insurers are passing those increases onto drivers. Secondly, because lawyers are more often involved in handling accident claims than in prior years, settlements are increasing, which also boosts insurance costs.
The surge in auto insurance rates is prompting drivers to change their behavior, according to a new report from LendingTree.
About 4 in 10 insured drivers who have been in an auto accident or incident have skipped filing a claim with their insurance company, its survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers found. About one-quarter of drivers who filed a claim said they later regretted it.
Drivers who avoided filing a claim said they did so because the damage was minimal or the deductible was higher than the cost to fix their vehicle. But another 42% said they skipped an insurance claim because they didn't want their rates to jump.
"Once you've been involved in an accident of any type, insurance companies see you as riskier to insure," LendingTree auto insurance expert and licensed insurance agent Rob Bhatt said in a statement. "Your rates will eventually come down if you avoid claims for three to five years, depending on your insurance company. But you're going to feel a financial squeeze until then."
Still, Bhatt said it's typically worth filing a claim if the repairs will cost a few thousand more than your deductible, even if your rates subsequently rise.
"The whole point of having car insurance is to prevent an accident from leaving you in financial hardship," he said.
Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.
Advertisement
There was a helicopter. It did make an emergency landing. But a former California lawmaker says Donald Trump has mixed up one Black lawmaker for another.
By Shawn Hubler Maggie Haberman and Heather Knight
Donald J. Trump was doubling down on Friday about his story of nearly crashing during a helicopter ride once with Willie Brown, the notable Black California politician.
He was so adamant that it had happened that he threatened to sue The New York Times for reporting that the story was untrue , then posted on his social media site that there were “‘Logs,’ Maintenance Records, and Witnesses” to back up his account.
“It was Willie Brown,” Mr. Trump, who spent much of the last year hoping to make gains with Black voters, posted. “But now Willie doesn’t remember?”
Mr. Brown, 90, who was mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California Assembly, gave several interviews on Thursday and Friday saying such a trip never occurred.
Turns out, however, that there was a Black politician from California who once made an emergency landing in a helicopter with Mr. Trump. It just wasn’t Mr. Brown.
Nate Holden, 95, a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator, said in an interview with The Times that he had been on a helicopter ride with Mr. Trump around 1990 when the aircraft experienced mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing in New Jersey.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in .
Want all of The Times? Subscribe .
Topic: Book Publishing Industry
Booktopia was a champion of Australian authors before its sudden collapse last month. ( ABC News: Emilia Terzon )
Booktopia has been sold to online electronics store digiDirect after going into administration
Administrator McGrathNicol said the deal enabled the immediate resumption of trading for the business.
Administrators are now preparing to convene a second creditors meeting.
The administrators of online book retailer Booktopia have confirmed they have secured a buyer for the troubled business.
The Australian company appointed administrators in July, after building up deep debts totalling an estimated $60 million.
The vast majority was owed to publishers who had been supplying it with stock, while $15 million was owed to customers with orders and gift vouchers.
McGrathNicol said it had organised the sale of Booktopia on Friday to online electronics store digiDirect, which it described as "a leading Australian-owned omnichannel consumer electronics retailer".
"Booktopia has been a key part of Australia's publishing industry for 20 years, and transitioning the business to such a well-known Australian retailer is a great outcome for all stakeholders," Keith Crawford, a partner and administrator at McGrathNicol, said.
The administrator said the deal would enable the business to immediately resume trading, with the new buyers confirming a formal relaunch was set for late August once operational processes resumed.
The digiDirect acquisition included the Angus & Robertson and Co-Op Bookshop brands and about $14 million in inventory.
Shant Kradjian, the founder and owner of digiDirect, said there were significant opportunities to revitalise Booktopia's business and introduce systems and processes.
"There are clear opportunities for shared expertise and efficiencies that will eventually create a better experience for Booktopia and digiDirect customers, however that is a conversation for down the road," he said.
However, the ABC understands publishers and customers are unlikely to see anything from the sale.
The tender was managed by McGrathNicol's deals team and supported by Booktopia's secured creditor, Moneytech, which provided funding to the administrators to preserve the business pending the sale process.
As it was finalised, digiDirect confirmed to McGrathNicol that it intended to hire more than 100 employees, with former Booktopia staff encouraged to rejoin the group to "return it to its past glories before growing from there".
Orders being fulfilled in Booktopia warehouse. ( Supplied: Booktopia )
"We are incredibly pleased to have completed the sale of the Booktopia business to the owner of digiDirect," Mr Crawford said.
"The transaction will result in the retention of all remaining employees, the recruitment of some 100 additional employees and continuity of supply for Booktopia's trade creditors."
Mr Kradjian was among several high-profile bidders, which were rumoured to include Kogan.com, Woolworths, Dymocks and QBD Books.
The digiDirect founder said he had been looking to expand into "new retail verticals" when Booktopia came up for sale.
"I'm excited about this acquisition and glad it could be kept in Australian hands," he said.
When Booktopia went into administration, there were about 150,000 orders worth about $12 million that went unfulfilled, many of them pre-ordered books that had not yet been delivered to the company.
An estimated $3 million was also owed to customers with gift cards.
The administrators said digiDirect was offering "special arrangements" to customers with unredeemed gift cards.
However, it is understood the final sale price was nowhere near the $60 million Booktopia owed to creditors and the deal does not include the book retailer's debts being paid off.
McGrathNicol said the sale price "will not be sufficient to provide for a return to shareholders".
This means only secured creditors like banks and Booktopia's employees are likely to see cash from the sale.
After the retailer's collapse, some customers who were owed books from the company managed to get refunds from their credit providers, such as PayPal, while publishers might have had their debts covered by credit insurance.
One prominent publisher told the ABC they welcomed Booktopia's sale to digiDirect because it had online sales experience and cashflow that would allow sales to continue for publishers.
Booktopia's main competitor was American technology giant Amazon, a sprawling online marketplace that has become the largest online retailer in the world.
Industry players say the gap in the online sales market left by Booktopia's collapse has seen customers migrate to Amazon as well as other players such as The Nile.
Booktopia was founded in 2004 by Steve Traurig and brothers Tony and Simon Nash.
It celebrated its 20th year in business in February, but since its debut on the ASX in December 2020 it lost more than 98 per cent of its value and last traded at $0.05.
Before it went into voluntary administration, the book retailer had been grappling with profit losses, a fine from the consumer watchdog for breaching consumer law with deceptive marketing tactics, and a revolving door of senior executives.
Booktopia's chief financial officer Fiona Levens resigned in May and chief executive David Nenke followed in June.
IMAGES
COMMENTS
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, New York, Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, 2014, 336pp.Paperback 2015 Reviewed By Alan W. Clarke. Your Honor … It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man for murder and send him to death row for something he didn't do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence.
Just Mercy is Bryan Stevenson 's account of his decades-long career as a legal advocate for marginalized people who have been either falsely convicted or harshly sentenced. Though the book contains profiles of many different people, the central storyline is that of the relationship between Stevenson, the organization he founded (the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI), and Walter McMillian, a ...
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014) is a memoir by American attorney Bryan Stevenson that documents his career defending disadvantaged clients. The book, focusing on injustices in the United States judicial system, alternates chapters between documenting Stevenson's efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian and his work on other cases, including children ...
A teenager convicted of a double murder by arson is relieved of agency; a man who placed a bomb on his estranged girlfriend's porch, inadvertently killing her niece, "had a big heart.". For ...
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. "[Bryan Stevenson's] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired me and many ...
Book review: 'Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption' by Bryan Stevenson ... Stevenson has made his latest contribution to criminal justice in the form of an inspiring memoir titled ...
Literary Laurels Just Mercy was listed in Time Magazine's top 10 nonfiction books of the year. It won the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2015 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Nonfiction. The best study guide to Just Mercy on the planet, from the creators ...
Just Mercy summary. This is my book summary of Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book. "Capital punishment means them without the capital get the punishment."
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is a memoir by attorney and author Bryan Stevenson, originally published in 2014 by Spiegel & Grau. The book became a New York Times best seller and ...
Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
In "Just Mercy," Bryan Stevenson invites us into his world of legal battles and moral challenges as he advocates for those crushed under the weight of a flawed justice system. This isn't just a book; it's a journey through the heart of America's struggle with racial and economic injustice, a story of resilience and the quest for mercy.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. "[Bryan Stevenson's] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired me and many ...
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. "[Bryan Stevenson's] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired me and many ...
Just Mercy is a powerful argument against the death penalty. The film — based on Bryan Stevenson's book and starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx — is flawed but vital.
Mr. Stevenson represents those on death row. Those who are on death row are are overwhelmingly African American. In the book, he shares the arc of his life and tells the compelling story of how he started the Equal Justice Initiative. Equal Justice Initiative "is committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United ...
Clients. Just Mercy tells the story of EJI's clients, from Walter McMillian and Anthony Ray Hinton — who were exonerated from Alabama's death row — to Joe Sullivan and Ian Manuel — who won release after being sentenced to die in prison for nonhomicide crimes in Florida when they were just 13 years old. We invite you to learn more about the clients featured in the book below.
Just Mercy (Movie Tie-In Edition, Adapted for Young Adults) By Bryan Stevenson. Bryan Stevenson's incredible fight to end mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and racial inequality comes to life in this young adult adaptation of the acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestseller that was adapted into a major motion picture starring Michael B ...
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN AND JAMIE FOXX • A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice—from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. "[Bryan Stevenson's] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired me and many ...
The typical U.S. insurance policy will jump 22% this year to an average annual premium of $2,469 by year-end, the report found. That comes after drivers saw their policies jump 24% in 2023, it noted.
Mr. Brown, he said, "just laughed and laughed." Mr. Holden, summing up his assessment of Mr. Trump's recollection, said: "I just think he makes things up. That's what I think.
The administrators of online book retailer Booktopia have confirmed they have secured a buyer for the troubled business. The Australian company appointed administrators in July, after building up ...
The president initially proposed Congress spend $15 billion to make it a reality, but just half of that - $7.5 billion - passed as part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.