Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
An intimate and astonishing rumination on gun violence in America from one of our greatest living writers and "genuine American original" (The Boston Globe) Paul Auster
Paul Auster was a crack marksman as a kid, and like most American boys of his generation he grew up playing with toy six-shooters and mimicking the gun-slinging cowboys in B-Westerns. But he also knows how families can be wrecked by a single act of gun violence: His grandmother shot and killed his grandfather when his father was just six years old.
Now, at this time of intense national discord, no issue divides Americans more deeply than the debate about guns. There are currently more guns than people in the United States, and every day more than one hundred Americans are killed by guns and another two hundred are wounded. These numbers are so large, so catastrophic, so disproportionate to what goes on elsewhere, that one must ask why. Why is America so different--and why are we the most violent country in the Western world?
In this short, searing book, Auster traces centuries of America's use and abuse of guns, through the colonial prehistory of the Republic, armed conflict against the native population, the forced enslavement of millions, and the mass shootings that dominate the current news cycle. He examines the embattled gun-control and anti-gun-control camps, frames gun violence as a public health issue, and investigates the details of one horrific incident- including the perpetrator's unchecked purchase of the gun he used and the suffering of a bystander-turned-hero.
Filled with haunting photographs by Spencer Ostrander that document the abandoned sites of more than thirty mass shootings, Bloodbath Nation is an unflinching work about guns in America that asks: What kind of society do we want to live in?
Synopsis
An intimate and powerful rumination on American gun
violence by Paul Auster, one of our greatest living writers and "genuine
American original" (The Boston Globe), in an unforgettable collaboration
with photographer Spencer Ostrander
Like most American boys of his generation, Paul Auster grew
up playing with toy six-shooters and mimicking the gun-slinging cowboys in
B-Westerns. A crack marksman by the age of ten, he also lived through the
traumatic aftermath of the murder of his grandfather by his grandmother when
his father was a child and knows, through firsthand experience, how families can
be wrecked by a single act of gun violence.
In this short, searing book, Auster traces centuries of
America's use and abuse of guns, from the violent displacement of the native
population, to the forced enslavement of millions, to the bitter divide between
embattled gun control and anti-gun control camps that has developed over the
past 50 years and the mass shootings that dominate the news today. Since 1968,
more than one and a half million Americans have been killed by guns. The
numbers are so large, so catastrophic, so disproportionate to what goes on
elsewhere, that one must ask why. Why is America so different--and why are we
the most violent country in the Western world?
Interwoven with Spencer Ostrander's haunting photographs of
the sites of more than thirty mass shootings in all parts of the country, Bloodbath
Nation presents a succinct but thorough examination of America at the
crossroads, and asks the central, burning question of our moment: What kind of
society do we want to live in?