What We Are Reading Today: Good Kids, Bad City by Kyle Swenson

Updated 08 March 2019
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What We Are Reading Today: Good Kids, Bad City by Kyle Swenson

  • The book tells the story of a man who ended up in jail for a crime that he did not commit

From award-winning investigative journalist Kyle Swenson, Good Kids, Bad City is the true story of the longest wrongful imprisonment in the United States to end in exoneration, and a critical social and political history of Cleveland, the city that convicted them.

“This is a book for anyone with a social consciousness,” said a review published in goodreads.com.

Another review added: “This book was hard to read, not because it was bad but because it is so hard to believe that things such as these stories told in this book are ones that are still happening in the world today.”

The book tells the story of a man who ended up in jail for a crime that he did not commit and the stories behind the city, the people, and the reasons why it happened and why it took almost 40 years for him to be release.

In a review published in The Washington Post, Mark Whitaker said Good Kids, Bad City “is a powerful addition to the growing literature on the failures of America’s criminal justice system, particularly in dealing with African American men.”

Whitaker added: “But it is also a gripping, novelistic account of what happened to the three defendants and their lone accuser after the convictions, a frank confession of the methods and emotions of an obsessed reporter, and a poignant meditation on the dark side of Cleveland and what became of that once-proud embodiment of Midwestern virtues that allowed this travesty to happen.”


What We Are Reading Today: Island at the Edge of the World

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Updated 30 January 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: Island at the Edge of the World

  • Pitts has gone deeper than any other writer in cutting through the miasma of misperceptions that shrouds the island, even if his work sometimes bogs down in numbing detail

Author: Mike Pitts

In his ‘Island at the Edge of the World,’ British archeologist Mike Pitts delves into the misconceptions and legends surrounding a complex ancient culture.
The book is a work of historical revisionism that re-examines the history of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, using new archeological evidence, a fresh reading of 18th-century European accounts, and the long-overlooked work of early 20th-century anthropologist Katherine Routledge
Pitts’ investigation offers authoritative new insights into what really happened on the island.
Pitts has gone deeper than any other writer in cutting through the miasma of misperceptions that shrouds the island, even if his work sometimes bogs down in numbing detail.
Many questions still remain, but this is the most compelling and comprehensive account yet published of the extraordinary story of Easter Island.