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
For fans only.
The hoodie-and-shorts-clad Pennsylvania senator blends the political and personal, and often not nicely.
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a path as a contentious player with a populist streak and a dislike for elites. There are affecting moments in his personal reminiscences, especially when he writes of the lives of his working-class neighbors in impoverished southwestern Pennsylvania, its once-prosperous Monongahela River Valley “the most heartbreaking drive in the United States.” It’s the third element that’s problematic, and that’s his in-the-trenches account of daily politics. One frequent complaint is the media, as when he writes of one incident, “I am not the first public figure to get fucked by a reporter, and I won’t be the last. What was eye-opening was the window it gave into how people with disabilities navigate a world that doesn’t give a shit.” He reserves special disdain for his Senate race opponent Mehmet Oz, about whom he wonders, “If I had run against any other candidate…would I have lost? He got beaten by a guy recovering from a stroke.” Perhaps so, and Democratic stalwarts will likely be dismayed at his apparent warmish feelings for Donald Trump and dislike of his own party’s “performative protests.” If Fetterman’s book convinces a troubled soul to seek help, it will have done some good, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impression in the self-help literature. One wonders, meanwhile, at sentiments such as this: “If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
For fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799826
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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