An indispensable contribution to the debate about gun violence.
In a stellar debut, Cox expands his Washington Post series on the invisible wounds of children damaged by gun violence, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.
In 2016, after the fatal shooting of a classmate at her South Carolina school, 7-year-old Ava Olsen was so traumatized that she developed severe PTSD. She even used stickers to cover up the “scary words” in Little House on the Prairie: “gun, fire, blood, kill.” In this powerful report on the emotional scars left by gun violence, Cox argues that Ava is one of millions of American children “who weren’t shot and aren’t considered victims by our legal system but who have, nonetheless, been irreparably harmed by the epidemic.” With deep sympathy for his young subjects, he probes the roots of—and possible solutions to—the crisis, taking sharp aim at the $3 billion school security market, which exploits parental fears by touting products of unproven worth, such as “$150 bulletproof backpacks.” But the beating heart of the narrative consists of the heart-rending stories of vulnerable children. Ava’s pen pal Tyshaun McPhatter wouldn’t let his mother wash a sweatshirt worn by his father, murdered in Washington, D.C., so he’d remember the scent. Her schoolmate Siena Kibilko, prepared for another shooting, had picked out a hiding spot at school “where she just knew the gunman wouldn’t think to look.” Especially moving is the story of Ava’s 6-year-old superhero-loving classmate, Jacob Hall, killed in the shooting at her school and laid out at his funeral in a Batman costume, mourned at the church by friends dressed in his honor as Captain America and other superheroes. Cox analyzes the gun crisis astutely, but his surpassing achievement in this eloquent book is to let children speak for themselves about their grief. Put this one on a shelf with Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here—and have a box of tissues handy.
An indispensable contribution to the debate about gun violence.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-288393-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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