Cast Out
A Call for a Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Sep 15, 2026
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"There is no them, there is only us."
“Margulies tells the stories of people who have done monstrous things but are not monsters, are not forever defined by their worst acts. He writes beautifully of pain and loss, but also of redemption and transformation….A wonderfully hopeful book about what it means to be human.”—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
In Cast Out, civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies insists that those who commit even the most heinous crimes are one of us and should be judged in a spirit of forgiveness. He explains that American society is too often unforgiving, preferring to cast out those we consider irredeemable by fixating narrowly on the question, “What did they do?”, and imagining that those who have done great wrongs have no past worth learning and no future worth preserving.
But judgment in a forgiving spirit demands that we ask, “What happened?” What brought a human being to this place. Through intimate interviews, his rich chapters bring to life six men and women, sharing their (sometimes brutal) crimes, the grim but all-too-human paths that led them there, and their evolution and insights.
Eye-opening and unflinching, Cast Out makes us truly see those society locks away—the so-called “worst of the worst”. It challenges the reader to see us in them and them in us, and in that way, to recognize the humanity we all share.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this compassionate rumination, civil rights and defense attorney Margulies, author of Thanks for Everything (Now Get Out), envisions a world where, in the wake of a crime, accountability "proceeds from the premise that wrongdoers were, are, and will always remain one of us, and where the goal... is not to cast out but to bring back." After decades of watching his clients, systematically cast aside for crimes committed at their lowest points, nevertheless find ways to genuinely reckon with the harm they've caused, Margulies has come to see that "there is no them; there is only us." To showcase how no one is beyond redemption, Margulies examines six people who committed crimes widely considered unforgivable, among them Eric (no last name given), who was sentenced to life in prison for killing his fiancée's two-year-old daughter, had a spiritual awakening, earned a bachelor's degree, and became a mentor to other inmates; and Lucas (no last name given), who tortured and killed a man as a teenager and joined a white supremacist prison gang before his extensive reading led him to reject their racist doctrine and become a conflict mediator. Margulies ultimately turns his lens back on his readers; the U.S., he castigates, has evolved into "a culture that is uncurious, ungenerous, and unyielding.... An unforgiving society asks, ‘What did you do?'.... A forgiving society asks, ‘What happened?' " Readers will find this an inspiring call for both greater curiosity and empathy.
