Mark Pendergrast

Joseph Stains reviews Pendergrast's 2017 book The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgement. Stain says it is "probably the most evenhanded and thoroughly documented volume on the topic". Pendergrast detailed the trial and did extensive research on the subject of Jerry Sandusky's 2012 guilty verdict for sexual abuse of young men at Penn State. Stains writes that Pendergrast made a compelling case that the small-town lawyer Sandusky chose to represent him and a prosecution that relied on repressed memories, no physical evidence and possible financial motives may have been the factors that led to the court finding him guilty. Stains states that Pendergrast "has done meticulous background work... and he provides material background for answering any question one may pose to him".

City of the Verge is a book about his hometown of Atlanta, GA. He named the book City on the Verge because of the anticipated influx of people into the city of Atlanta. According to Pendergrast, in 2017, the population within the city is expected to triple in the next 30 years.

His book on the Jerry Sandusky case, The Most Hated Man in America, was prompted by a 2013 email from an Oregon woman, named Glenna Kerker, who told him that the case had a lot of testimony based on repressed memory therapy. Pendergrast wrote his original arguments for Sandusky’s innocence in The Crime Report in 2016 while working on The Most Hated Man in America. Freudian psychoanalysis critic, Frederick Crews, wrote an article in Skeptic Magazine detailing the Sandusky case, primarily using arguments from The Most Hated Man in America.

Beyond Fair Trade is a book about the Akha hill tribe in Thailand that grows coffee rather than opium poppies after opium raids forced them to relocate in 1985. It also examines the history of the specialty coffee movement.

Mark Pendergrast (born 1948) is an American independent scholar and author of fourteen books, including three children's books. His books are mainly non-fiction and cover a wide range of topics, most notably repressed memories. He is a volunteer with the National Center for Reason and Justice, a non-profit organization that advocates for people who are falsely accused or convicted of crimes.

Pendergrast was born in 1948 to Nan and Britt Pendergrast, the fourth of seven children. He was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Harvard College, after which he taught for several years in public schools. Pendergrast later attended Simmons College in Boston, where he obtained a Master of Arts degree in Library Science. He worked as an academic librarian and freelance writer until becoming a full-time writer in 1991. Pendergrast lives in Colchester, Vermont.