They often decide who goes free and who goes to prison, even who lives and who dies.

Much of the time, it is prosecutors more than judges who control the outcome of a case, from choosing the charge to setting bail to determining the plea bargain. That image of the law does not match the reality in the courtroom, however. The American criminal justice system is supposed to be a contest between two equal adversaries, the prosecution and the defense, with judges ensuring a fair fight. Emily Bazelon, ChargedĪ renowned journalist and legal commentator exposes the unchecked power of the prosecutor as a driving force in America’s mass incarceration crisis-and charts a way out. He lives in Austin, Texas, and Montauk, New York. Paul Tough is the author of three previous books, including the bestselling How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which has been translated into 27 languages.

The Years That Matter Most will shake you up, it will inspire and enrage you, and it will make you think differently about who we are as a country – and whether the American dream of opportunity and mobility is still worthy of our faith. And you’ll see the many shapes that college in America takes today, from Ivy League seminar rooms to community college welding shops from giant public flagships to tiny, innovative experiments in urban storefronts. You’ll encounter the individuals who, behind the scenes, make higher education go: from an SAT tutor hacking the test and his students’ stressed-out brains to a calculus professor turning potential drop-outs into math majors. In these pages, you will meet young people making their way through this system, with joy and frustration and sorrow: deciding how and where to apply, cramming for the SAT, braving a strange new campus, negotiating changing family relationships, and trying to find the resilience to recover from setbacks and downturns. The best-selling author of How Children Succeed returns with a devastatingly powerful, mind-changing inquiry into higher education in the United Statesĭoes college work? Does it provide real opportunity for young people who want to improve themselves and their prospects? Or is it simply a rigged game designed to protect the elites who have power and exclude everyone else? For many of us, our doubts and resentments about higher education live side by side with an appreciation, even a yearning, for the life-changing personal transformation that a college education can provide.

Charged by Emily Bazelon