Book Review: Everyone against Us: Public Defenders and the Making of American Justice

Everyone against Us is a memoir of a lawyer’s nine year career in the Cook County, Illinois Public Defender’s Office. Readers ought not expect a “wonkish” book, detailing how to improve upon the dysfunction in the American criminal justice system. Rather, it is very personal, with large portions of the book being about the author’s experiences (that can often seem only tangentially related to legal defense). However, this helps the reader delve deeper into the mindset of one called to serve as the sole legal representation of the indigent in one of the largest (and most crime-prone) jurisdictions in the U.S., and it makes for a very readable book.