Jury duty happens to everyone. When the call found Graham Burnett, a young historian, he previously a shock waiting for you. A Trial by Jury is normally his startling account of how executing this familiar civic duty challenged him with techniques he never believed possible and turned into perhaps one of the most consuming encounters of his lifestyle.

Burnett begins with the story from the trial: a body with multiple stab wounds found in a New York apartment, intimations of cross-dressing, man prostitution, mistaken identification. And then, in regards to a Trial by Jury the unforeseen crisis: Burnett finds himself appointed the foreman, with the duty of leading the progressively frenetic deliberations within the dark box of the jury room.

Soon he’s sequestered-which is to say marooned-with eleven others, a group of people who view their task, and frequently each other, with palpable distaste. Among his colleagues: a vacuum-cleaner repairman cum metropolitan missionary, a actress, and a man apparently floundering within a borderland between true to life and daytime television.

As Burnett steers the contentious politics of their short-term no-exit society toward the verdict, he undergoes an urgent awakening. Having been plucked from his cozy nest in the wonderful world of books and ideas and plunged in to the netherworld of lurid criminal offense, he discovers the limitations of what intellect by itself can accomplish in real life. Above all, Burnett discovers firsthand the terrifying best power from the state and the agonies of being asked to accomplish justice inside the rigid dictates of the law.

Part true crime, component political treatise, part contemplation of best, wrong, and the energy of phrases, A Trial by Jury is a mesmerizing narrative of one man’s encounter with crime and punishment, American design. It profoundly affects one’s sense from the privileges-and the perils-of citizenship.