The Runaway Jury, Week 1

Welcome to Week 1 of the Online Book Club discussion of The Runaway Jury.

The Online Book Club, if you've never joined us before, is a book discussion group that takes place entirely online. Each week, I write a new blog post that talks about different aspects of the book, and you can interact directly with me and other readers by leaving your comments. Check back each week and see what new topics we're talking about.

The Runaway Jury follows a tobacco trial in Mississippi in which a widow is suing the tobacco companies for causing her husband's death. Both the defense and the prosecution try to build the perfect jury, investigating each member to figure out if they are sympathetic to the tobacco companies or not. Throughout the book, readers find out that the defense has many manipulative tactics to influence the jury and control the outcome of the trial. Juror #2 is a bit of an enigma to the defense--will his presence on the jury help or hurt their case? 

If you want to follow along with us but you aren't interested in reading the book, you can always watch the movie version starring Dustin Hoffman. Check out the trailer above if you want to get a feel for the how the story plays out on screen. Feel free to still leave comments on the blog posts, even if you're only watching the movie and not reading the book. 

We'll be reading the first 14 chapters for next week, so make sure to read those before checking out the next post. I look forward to hearing from you in the comments!