The United States has far more homicides than any of its peers around the world. Why?
In this groundbreaking book, Malcolm Gladwell explores the American “peculiarity”—how the world’s wealthiest country came to suffer from a problem typically only seen in the world’s poorest countries.
Drawing on original interviews, archival and social science research, and his trademark insight, Gladwell approaches the American paradox through a series of stories. What can we learn from the miracle of a young gunshot victim in Washington, D.C.? How have the legal troubles of a seventeenth-century English knight influenced American attempts at gun control? Why would a European police chief be baffled by the graduation ceremony at any American police academy?
In a sweeping narrative, Gladwell travels from a shooting range in North Carolina, to the South Side of Chicago, to an old plantation house in Alabama, painting a picture of a country that does not understand its most pressing social problem, and as result, does not understand how to fix it.
Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist, a speaker, and the author of eight New York Times bestsellers, including The Tipping Point, Outliers, David and Goliath, Talking to Strangers, and The Bomber Mafia. He is the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, where he hosts the hit podcast Revisionist History.
Gladwell will be in conversation with Jerusalem Demsas. Demsas is CEO, founder, and editor-in-chief of The Argument, a new magazine revitalizing liberalism through evidence-driven journalism and debate. The Argument covers politics, policy, and culture with original polling, and rigorous analysis. She was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, a policy journalist at Vox, and author of On the Housing Crisis