To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read, and called one of the most beloved American novels ever written by The New Yorker, To Kill a Mockingbird is Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the Deep South, and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred.

One of the most cherished stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than fifty million copies worldwide and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, Scout Finch, as her father Atticus, a crusading local lawyer, risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice, though the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

This book is featured on The Book Club with Michael Knowles, PragerU's show dedicated to the great books of Western civilization. In this episode, Michael Knowles is joined by Derryck Green to discuss why this timeless American classic, now met with trigger warnings by some, still deserves to be read rather than banned.

📺 Watch the episode: Derryck Green — To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Read Harper Lee's enduring classic of courage and conscience in the Deep South, and discover why a story confronting racism head-on remains essential reading today.