Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by BERENDT, John

New York: Random House, 1994. The Longest Standing Best Seller on the New York Times List

BERENDT, John. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. A Savannah Story. New York: Random House, [1994]. First edition. Octavo (9 3/16 x 5 9/16 inches; 233 x 137 mm.). [viii], 388, [iv], pp.

Publisher's quarter black cloth over black paper boards, front cover with "JB" stamped n gilt, spine lettered in gilt.
A mint copy in the original pictorial dust jacket.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a non-fiction work by John Berendt. Published in 1994, the book was Berendt's first, and became a The New York Times bestseller for 216 weeks following its debut and still, to this day, the longest-standing best-seller of the Times.

The book was subsequently made into a 1997 movie, directed by Clint Eastwood and was loosely on Berendt's story of the real-life events that took place in Savannah, Georgia in the 1980s. The film features Kevin Spacey as Jim Williams, a man on trial for murder, and John Cusack as John Kelso, a writer covering the case. Several changes were made in adapting the film from the novel. Many of the more colorful characters were eliminated or made into composite characters. The writer, played by Cusack, was based upon Berendt, but was given a love interest not featured in the book, played by Eastwood's daughter Alison Eastwood. The multiple Williams trials were combined into one on-screen trial. Jim Williams' real life attorney Sonny Seiler appears in the movie in the role of Judge White, the presiding judge of the trial.

John Berendt (born December 5, 1939) is an American author, known for writing the best-selling non-fiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.