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Title details for The Barn by Wright Thompson - Wait list

The Barn

The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi

by Wright Thompson
Wright Thompson
Audiobook
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Wait time: About 5 weeks
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0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: About 5 weeks
The instant New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Slate, Vanity Fair, TIME, Buzzfeed, Smithsonian, BookPage, KCUR, Kirkus, and Boston Globe • Nominated for a PEN America Literary Award
“It literally changed my outlook on the world…incredible.” —Shonda Rhimes

"The Barn is serious history and skillful journalism, but with the nuance and wallop of a finely wrought novel… The Barn describes not just the poison of silence and lies, but also the dignity of courage and truth.” — The Washington Post
“The most brutal, layered, and absolutely beautiful book about Mississippi, and really how the world conspired with the best and worst parts of Mississippi, I will ever read…Reporting and reckoning can get no better, or more important, than this.” —Kiese Laymon

“An incredible history of a crime that changed America.” —John Grisham

"With integrity, and soul, Thompson unearths the terrible how and why, carrying us back and forth through time, deep in Mississippi—baring sweat, soil, and heart all the way through.” —Imani Perry
A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare the long lead-up to the crime and how the truth was hidden for so long

In summer 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, and acquitted in a mockery of justice, leaving behind an ink cloud of a false confession. In The Barn, Wright Thompson reveals the true nature and location of the long night of hell that August: inside the barn of one of the killers, within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West,
Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues, and twenty-three miles from Thompson’s own family farm.
Wright Thompson has a deep, local understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, the historical forces that brought them together in the same place, and how the crime came to loom so large. Putting the killing floor of the barn on the map of West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a way onto the road this country must travel if we are to heal our oldest, deepest wound.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 24, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593943861
      • File size: 335181 KB
      • Duration: 11:38:17

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 21, 2024
      A forgotten landmark signifies silence and complicity in this sprawling history of the Emmett Till murder. ESPN journalist Thompson (The Cost of These Dreams) revisits the 1955 killing of Till, a 14-year-old Black Chicagoan visiting relatives in Mississippi, for whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Till was dragged from his bed by Bryant’s husband, Roy Bryant, her brother-in-law J.W. Milam, and others, who tortured and shot Till and left his body in a river. Bryant and Milam were acquitted at trial and then, protected by double jeopardy laws, confessed to the crime in a self-justifying Look magazine interview. Drawing on his own interviews with eyewitnesses and their relatives, Thompson gives a chilling recap of Till’s murder and outlines the firestorm of publicity that made the case a civil rights touchstone, the willful amnesia about the lynching among whites in Mississippi, and the latter-day movement to commemorate the barn where Till died. The narrative also traces multigenerational histories of families associated with the killing as well as the underlying forces—land values and cotton prices—that ruled their harshly exploitative society. Throughout, Thompson combines meticulous historical sleuthing with dense atmospherics (“The darkness of rural Mississippi remains a physical thing, heavy and alive.... There is no safety outside the civilization of headlights”). It’s a vivid recreation of a shocking crime.

    • Library Journal

      March 7, 2025

      Journalist Thompson (Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last) offers a stunning history of the brutal 1955 torture and murder of 14-year-old Black teenager Emmett Till, who was lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Thompson, whose family farm is located just 23 miles away from where Till was killed, notes that Mississippi's response to Till's death (particularly in white communities) has largely been silence; the shocking crime isn't talked about or taught in most Mississippi schools. Thompson sheds new light on Till's murder, focusing not only on the lynching but also on the people who were present and those who prevented justice from being rendered. He also highlights the spot where Till was killed, at a barn owned by one of the killers. Thompson interviewed the few surviving people with direct knowledge of Till and his family, including Till's friend Wheeler Parker, who accompanied Till to Mississippi and was the last of his friends or family to see him alive. Thompson narrates his own work, offering a compelling and convincing performance. His solemn and sober tone effectively conveys the facts while bringing home the gravity of this vicious lynching. VERDICT A heartbreaking and illuminating listen, laying bare the social and political climate of the time and the lasting impact of a horrifying hate crime.--Erin Cataldi

      Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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