by Chris Murphy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 7, 2020
A fair-minded view of a topic that’s as divisive as any in the current political discourse.
A rising presence in the Democratic Party faces off against the current epidemic of mayhem in America.
Are Americans any more violent than other people? Probably not, suggests Murphy, a senator from Connecticut; the tendency, even instinct, to violent reaction is a human universal. Yet, he asks, “Why is America such a disturbing outlier of violence in the industrialized world?” In this broad-ranging study, his answers are various, from in- and out-group rivalry in a nation of many ethnicities and cultures to the plain fact that guns are entirely too accessible. Murphy’s account proceeds from the grim realities of incidents such as the slaughter of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in his home state, piled onto other mass shootings, to “the grudge crimes, the domestic assaults, and the suicides” that end in gunshots. The author delivers a few rueful confessions along the way: When he was a member of the House of Representatives, he didn’t pay much attention to the question of gun violence “because the one major city in my congressional district, Waterbury, had very few gun homicides.” Expanding his purview to places like New Haven and Hartford expanded his view of the problem. Murphy also delivers a couple of surprises, such as his view that, for the most part, the current judicial position that the Second Amendment covers individual gun owners is correct—or at least a nonstarter to argue against, since other preventive measures, such as monitoring would-be buyers for criminal records and the like, are available. The author closes his winding but effective narrative, which incorporates everything from the latest federal statistics to scholarly views of human nature, with the observation that the National Rifle Association is becoming politically marginalized and, with it, the GOP. Ultimately, Murphy hopes for the rise of a class of voters “who will decide never to support a candidate who doesn’t support commonsense interventions like universal background checks and assault weapons bans.”
A fair-minded view of a topic that’s as divisive as any in the current political discourse.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984854-57-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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by Chris Murphy
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
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by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
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by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
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