The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic

Malcolm Gladwell’s most urgent book yet: a provocative investigation of America’s epidemic of gun violence.

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 has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1996. He is the author of The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw. Prior to joining The New Yorker, he was a reporter at the Washington Post. Gladwell was born in England and grew up in rural Ontario. He now lives in New York.

"Eye-opening…At every turn in this arresting, informative, and invaluable inquiry, Gladwell reveals hidden realities and contrasts honest versus dishonest discourse.”―Booklist