A useful work of scholarship in documenting American lethality.
A collection of academic essays on the American penchant for mass shootings.
Americans commit a disproportionate number of mass shootings, far greater than other societies even where private gun ownership is permitted, such as India and Switzerland. The contributors to this volume, edited by criminal justice professors Madfis and Lankford, seek to understand what elements in American society fuel this murderous streak—which, as one notes, has only grown in recent years, at least in some measure because of the widespread availability of not just guns, but also large capacity magazines. Banning those “may prove a more effective intervention for mass shootings than restrictions on assault weapons.” Whereas it is a popular trope among gun advocates that mental illness is the real issue, as criminologists Jillian Peterson and James Densley write, its symptoms are likely less important than other indicators, such as “stress, unemployment, relationship struggles, violence, and trauma.” Besides, they add, only 5% of violent crimes are committed by “people with serious mental illness.” So who are the shooters? As several contributors provide data points to show, they are often White males who are sexually insecure, have likely been ridiculed or bullied, and have easy access to weapons. Older mass shooters tend to hold White supremacist beliefs, while younger ones are more likely not to be particularly ideological. Whereas “three overlapping groups—gun owners, Republicans, and conservatives” insist that there’s nothing that can be done to stop mass shootings, several of the authors suggest that this isn’t so. For instance, reforming an educational system that reinforces social isolation, bullying, and untreated trauma might “lead the way to a less violent society with far fewer mass shootings and other pathologies.” More immediately, and predictably, many contributors call for stronger measures to restrict the availability of military-grade weapons to civilian buyers.
A useful work of scholarship in documenting American lethality.Pub Date: June 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781439923139
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Temple Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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