You Can't Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads

“Angelo Herndon had been a Communist Party organizer for barely two years when the Atlanta police arrested him for attempting to incite an insurrection. In his careful, compelling new book, Brad Snyder recreates the extraordinary struggle to save Herndon from life on a Jim Crow chain gang for daring to promote ideas the authorities didn’t want to hear. A story of fundamental principles and unlikely heroes, expertly told.” – Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age“Some works of history are top-down. Some bottom-up. You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads is both. Brad Snyder moves gracefully from the streets of 1930s Atlanta, where Angelo Herndon, a young Black radical, was charged with insurrection, all the way to the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a hard and hopeful story. Snyder tells it with energy, economy, wide-ranging empathy, and quiet passion.” – James Goodman, author of Stories of Scottsboro“A gripping story of how democracy triumphed under the most challenging circumstances. A timely book and a great read.” – Patricia Sullivan, author of Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White

Brad Snyder, author of Democratic Justice, is a professor of constitutional law and twentieth-century American legal history at Georgetown Law. In addition to his legal scholarship, he has written for Politico, Slate, and the Washington Post. He lives in Washington, DC.