Bloodbath Nation

September 1, 2022

In Bloodbath Nation, Man Booker short-listed novelist Auster assays the history of gun violence in the United States from the time of the first white settlers through the current mass shootings that make the country the most violent in the Western world. A New York Times best-selling author (Unfair), law professor Benforado uses real-life portraits in A Minor Revolution to detail how the United States fails its children, with 11 million in poverty, 4 million lacking health insurance, thousands prosecuted as adults, and countless struggling in substandard public schools mere miles from the polished halls of elite private institutions. Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University, Bloom recapitulates one of Yale's most popular courses in Pysch, offering an up-to-date understanding of the mind's workings--particularly in the context of key contemporary moral and sociopolitical issues (75,000-copy first printing). CNN senior legal analyst Honig (Hatchet Man) challenges the two-tier justice system in the United States that allows the wealthy, the celebrated, and particularly the powerful to be Untouchable (35,000-copy first printing). In A Woman's Life Is a Human Life, historian Kornbluh (The Battle for Welfare Rights) offers a timely overview of a half-century's worth of fighting for reproductive rights. Having unearthed the dismal origins of climate change denial in Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway tackle another Big Myth, the magic of the marketplace, from the early 1900s business challenges to regulations through to the down-with-big-government cries still prevailing (150,000-copy first printing). Owens, a Black gay journalist with Forbes 30 Under 30 credentials, makes The Case for Cancel Culture by repositioning it not as suppression or put-down but as a key means of democratic expression and accountability (60,000-copy first printing). The mega-best-selling novelist Patterson joins with his Walk in My Combat Boots coauthor Eversmann and thriller writer Mooney to Walk the Blue Line, telling the true-life stories of police officers (300,000-copy first printing). Named by Nature among "10 People Who Mattered in Science in 2018," retired biologist and investigative genetic genealogist Rae-Venter explains in I Know Who You Are how she found a serial killer in 63 days after he had eluded authorities for 44 years. The New York Times reporter charged with covering the Federal Reserve, Smialek shows in Limitless how this formerly behind-the-curtains institution has been forced into greater transparency by rising inequality, falling global economic prospects, and the ravages of pandemic. A political reporter for the Daily Beast who has spent the last several years tracking QAnon, Sommer explains what it is, why it has gained traction, what dangers it poses, and how to shake adherents loose from its dogma in Trust the Plan (100,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for March 2022).Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law and executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, respectively, at NYU School of Law, Yoshino and Glasgow investigate how we can Say the Right Thing in an era when issues of race, gender equity, and LGBTQ+ inclusiveness are at the forefront.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from October 17, 2022
Novelist Auster (Burning Boy) and photographer Spencer Ostrander take a powerful look at the causes and consequences of gun violence in America. Interweaving tragic stories and eye-opening statistics (40,000 Americas are killed by guns every year) with haunting, black-and-white photographs of mass shooting sites (Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School; the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.) after the media scrums that cover such “grisly spectacles” have departed, Auster explores the historical and cultural forces that have made America “the most violent country in the Western world” and reflects on his own experiences with gun violence, including the family trauma caused by his grandmother’s killing of his grandfather in 1919. Elsewhere, Auster sketches the psychological profiles of mass killers, noting that the Aurora, Colo., multiplex shooter, who played loud techno music through his headphones during his assault, had “nerves so delicately strung” he couldn’t “bear to listen to the clamor and the screams” of his victims. For Auster, who casts doubt on the likelihood of judicial or legislative remedies, the end to the gun debate will only occur when “both sides want it, and in order for that to happen, we would first have to conduct an honest, gut-wrenching examination of who we are and who we want to be as a people going forward into the future.” This trenchant account goes a long way toward making that possible. Photos.

December 1, 2022
Strange things happen in Auster's novels, while in his nonfiction we learn that he's no stranger to the inexplicable in real life. As he takes up the painful and confounding subject of rampant gun violence in America, he reveals a tragic family secret that embodies the fact that fatal shootings reverberate through families and communities for generations. A refined and electrifying writer, Auster presents memories, facts, and commentary with stunning clarity, recounting the horrific details of one mass shooting after another in sync with Spencer Ostrander's somber photographs of grocery stores, schools, a small-town city hall, a Walmart, churches, each silent and haunted after massacres of innocent people. Auster ponders bewildering statistics and the motives of mass shooters, considers the role of guns in our "national mythology" and our failure to face our violent past, parses the Second Amendment and failed attempts at gun control, and examines how social media has helped turn mass shootings into "both a competitive sport and a sinister new variant of contemporary performance art."" A rigorous and evocative grappling with mass tragedies in this time of "furious discord."

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Starred review from December 1, 2022
The acclaimed novelist lays out how America became a nation terrorized by personal weaponry. In this brief but remarkably moving work, Auster blends personal and historical commentary, anecdotal and statistical evidence, sober analysis, and passionate appeals for reform, sketching the origins and present reality of American gun violence. Early in the book, he reveals a disturbing secret: When his father was 6 years old, his grandmother deliberately shot and killed his grandfather in an act attributed to temporary insanity. Auster suggests that this tragedy and its ramifying trauma might be viewed as broadly and uncannily representative of modern American life, where such violence has been normalized by its frequency. The author remains both sensible and compelling in his commentary as he notes the divisiveness of efforts at gun control, and he skillfully summarizes the reasoning and emotional commitments of both pro- and anti-gun activists. His outline of the nation's historical relationship with guns is astute and memorable, and he persuasively assesses the sociopolitical roots of the "right to bear arms," the ideological impacts of long-term conflicts with Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans, and the strange oscillations of outrage and complacency that define contemporary responses to mass shootings. Though Auster's arguments will be familiar to anyone who has followed gun control debates closely, the author's overview is exceptional in its clarity and arresting in its sense of urgency. The book includes a series of photographs by Ostrander, each of them absent of human figures or any overt suggestion of traumatic events--caption: "Safeway supermarket parking lot. Tucson, Arizona. January 8, 2011. 6 people killed; 15 injured (13 by gunfire)." The photos document the sites of mass shootings and provoke, like the text, disquieting confrontations with the nation's transformation of all private and public settings into potential sites of violence. A harrowing, haunting reflection on the routine slaughter wrought by guns.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2022

Novelist Auster ("The New York Trilogy") writes an anguished cry of bafflement at this country's obsession for guns; it's not a call to regulate or ban certain types of firearms. Although Auster has never owned a gun, he became a skilled marksman by the age of 10. He learned firsthand how a single act of gun violence can start a generational collapse of family when his grandmother murdered his grandfather. But his personal history goads him to ask, why does society accept approximately 40,000 deaths a year--half of them by suicide--from guns? To answer that, the author examines how these shootings grow out of the combined psyche of U.S. Americans, the cowboy mythos, endless fictional violence on television, and the politicians who use fear to distort reality. He also traces the racial history of the United States and how it's translated into widespread violence. VERDICT Not a comfortable read but rather a work that deals with the societal consequences of sacrificing thousands of lives. Ideal for libraries with collections on both gun control and sociology.--Edwin Burgess

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.