Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

by Gary Younge Narrated by Mirron Willis

Overview

On an average day in America, seven young people aged nineteen or under will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America, award-winning Guardian journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of the lives lost during the course of a single day in the United States. It could have been any day, but Younge has chosen November 23, 2013. From Jaiden Dixon (9), shot point-blank by his mother's ex-boyfriend on his doorstep in Ohio, to Pedro Dado Cortez (16), shot by an enemy gang on a street corner in California, the narrative crisscrosses the country over a period of twenty-four hours to reveal the powerful human stories behind the statistics.

Far from a dry account of gun policy in the United States or a polemic about the dangers of gun violence, the book is a gripping chronicle of an ordinary but deadly day in American life, and a series of character portraits of young people taken from us far too soon and those they left behind. Whether it's a father's unspeakable grief over his son who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, a mentor who tries to channel his rage by organizing, or a friend and neighbor who finds strength in faith, the lives lost on that day and the lives left behind become, in Younge's hands, impossible to ignore, or to forget. What emerges in these pages is a searing portrait of youth, family, and the way that lives can be shattered in an instant on any day in America.

At a time when it has become indisputable that Americans need to rethink their position on guns, this moving narrative work puts a human face-a child's face-on the “collateral damage” of gun deaths across the country. In his journalism, Younge is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and looking twice where others might look away. There are some things, he argues, that we have come to see as normal, even when they are unacceptable. And gun violence is one of them. A clear-eyed and iconoclastic approach to this contentious issue, this book helps answer the questions so many of us are grappling with, and makes it even harder to just look away.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Thomas Vinciguerra

…compelling…Younge conveys [ten] personal histories with reportorial assurance and compassion. Woven throughout is a larger theme—this country's unique confluence of race, class and firearms.

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

Another Day in the Death of America…is exactingly argued, fluidly written and extremely upsetting. This is your country on guns. A book like this has potential pitfalls, highhandedness not least among them. But Mr. Younge…makes for a personable, unusual narrator. As a Briton, he brings a fresh perspective to this topic. As a father and a man of Barbadian descent, his interest in it is also personal. "I had skin in the game," he writes. "Black skin in a game where the odds were stacked against it."

Publishers Weekly

08/01/2016
Guardian journalist Younge (The Speech) chronicles the shooting deaths of 10 children and teens on a random Saturday in 2013 to illustrate the capriciousness of gun violence in America. The circumstances vary: one child is a victim of a domestic dispute; two were shot by friends playing with firearms; one was a known gang leader. While one shooting “tore at the very fabric of tight-knit community,” another elicited only an 81-word mention in the newspaper. Younge explores each incident in terms of its location, from the San Jose, Calif., enclave of the Nuestra Familia gang to rural Marlette, Mich., where hunting is popular. He discusses the flawed gun control narratives that require the “elevation and canonization of ‘the worthy victim’ ” to engage the public’s sympathy, and critiques the NRA’s lobbying practices as corrupt. He further castigates the entrenched racism and poverty that keep young African-Americans mired in a cycle of violence. Drawing from insights from community organizers and scholarship on violence, economics, and psychology, Younge provides nuance and context to a polarizing issue. The personal touches, however, are most affecting, as Younge pieces together each story from news reports and interviews with friends and family, weaving a tragic narrative of wasted potential. Agent: Frances Coady, Aragi. (Oct.)This review has been corrected to reflect the correct agent for the book.

From the Publisher

"...a powerful and necessary accounting of one of the deadliest epidemics ever to sweep across America-and a call to action to do something about gun violence. Younge's writing is chilling, urgent and profound; his reportage deeply personalizes the victims, making them come alive through the memories of those who knew them during their short lives." —The Root

"Younge brings a clear-eyed perspective to this fraught topic... A heartrending compendium of the lives of American children taken by guns on an average day. Gripping and eloquent yet challenging in the brutality of its subject, this important book calls for empathy and should be widely read." —Library Journal, Starred Review

"A heart-rending, beautifully crafted book...Important, deeply affecting, and certain to alarm readers who care about the lives of children in a gun-ridden society." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Heartbreaking, compelling and inspiring, this is a strong voice for the victims of many devastatingly silent, daily tragedies." —Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

"This book is a righteous challenge to the big insanities of American society: gun ubiquity, racism, poverty, and the supine and bland media that taboos genuine discourse on them. It's all the more daring and subversive for its controlled and mannered tone as it breaks the unwritten law: thou shall not humanize the victims of this ongoing carnage." —Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting

"Another Day in the Death of America is the kind of book that instantly changes you. There's no way to walk away from these ten stories of children who were all victims of gun violence on the same day and not feel the heat of anger and despair about the gun culture that creates a seemingly inescapable cycle of violence in America. Gary Younge trains his considerable talents on one day, that could have been any of our bullet and blood filled days, and sketches the lives of the real people who suffer so much for our inability to act. We need to know them." —Mychal Denzel Smith, author of Invisible Man Got The Whole World Watching

"...exactingly argued, fluidly written and extremely upsetting. This is your country on guns. A book like this has potential pitfalls, highhandedness not least among them. But Mr. Younge...makes for a personable, unusual narrator. As a Briton, he brings a fresh perspective to this topic. As a father and a man of Barbadian descent, his interest in it is also personal." —New York Times

"...a sharp portrait of America, painted in blood." —The Economist

"Sad, frustrating, but profoundly humane and ultimately illuminating, Another Day is political writing at its best." —Oprah Magazine

"...his accounts and analysis are powerful..." —New York Times Sunday Book Review

"An often unbearable act of bearing witness...it's impossible to pretend we don't have a problem when we lose 10 young people in one day." —Boston Globe

"...[an] insightful book..." —Mary Mitchell, Chicago Sun-Times

"Despite the composure of his writing, there is passion in Younge's condemnation of a system that renders the poor and the dark in America invisible. In illuminating the stories of some of these people and of their communities, Younge has provided us with a beautifully told and empathic account that wrenches at the heart even as it continues to engage the brain." —The Guardian

"...a book that feels both timely and utterly, hopelessly timeless..." —Financial Times

"A subtle yet searing condemnation of U.S. gun culture & indifference to endemic gun violence." —The Atlantic

"A masterclass in journalism..." —The Spectator (UK)

"In thoughtful, evenhanded chapters stacked with footnotes, Younge works methodically to uncover the unique patterns and hypocrisies of his adopted second home....'Another Day' doesn't offer solutions, because it can't; it just makes it impossible not to care." —Entertainment Weekly

"Despite the composure of his writing, there is passion in Younge's condemnation of a system that renders the poor and the dark in America invisible. In illuminating the stories of some of these people and of their communities, Younge has provided us with a beautifully told and empathic account that wrenches at the heart even as it continues to engage the brain." —The Guardian

"This is Gary Younge's masterwork: you will never read news reports about gun violence the same way again. Brilliantly reported, quietly indignant and utterly gripping. A book to be read through tears." —Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

"Gary Younge's Another Day in the Death of America is a harrowing account of children's lives cut short by the ubiquity of violence in the United States. Drawn from suburbs and cities of every demographic, these sensitively researched portraits of virtually unknown victims and their grieving families expose the structural ties of race, class, and lack of gun control. Younge's book completes the picture of what violence looks like in contemporary America, and should be required reading for anyone naming themselves American." —Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen

"Formidably intelligent and tenacious. A tour de force of regulated passion."—Martin Amis

"[Younge provides] nuance and context to a polarizing issue...The personal touches, however, are most affecting, as Younge pieces together each story from news reports and interviews with friends and family, weaving a tragic narrative of wasted potential." —Publishers Weekly

"A heartrending compendium of the lives of American children taken by guns on an average day. Gripping and eloquent yet challenging in the brutality of its subject, this important book calls for empathy and should be widely read." —Library Journal, Starred Review

"Gun control remains one of the most polarizing topics in America. To give a human face to the issue, Younge, editor-at-large for The Guardian, investigates the stories of 10 people who died by gunshot on a random day-November 23, 2013...Younge states that "researching and writing this book has made me want to scream." Most readers will feel that way reading it, as there are no easy fixes here." —Booklist

"Younge's anecdotal style has a measured strength." —Chicago Tribune

"A sobering exploration...Younge has produced a deeply nuanced portrait of the social, racial and economic forces behind the daily carnage of gun deaths in America."—Chris Serres, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"By focusing on just one day, and the ten young American lives cut short on that day by gun violence, Gary Younge delivers a searing, beautifully-written indictment of gun culture in America. An important reminder that the toll of America's ridiculous gun laws results in daily tragedies that go largely unnoticed. An important book."—Peter Swanson, author of The Kind Worth Killing

"Gary Younge's Another Day in the Death of America is a book everyone would wish didn't have to be written. That Gary Younge, one of the very finest journalists we have, has drawn from one specific, random day in our country the deaths perpetuated by gunfire - given it human dimension and tragedy - makes this vital, urgent necessary book one to read and pay heed to. This brave book, in its place as witness, looks our gun sickness straight in the eye to pose the question, do any lives matter?"—Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company

"Another Day in the Death of America is that rarest of things: a truly necessary book. Younge's compassion, as much as his willingness to look this perpetual tragedy in the face, sets the book apart from much of the writing about our disastrous obsession with guns. I found it utterly heartbreaking and urgent. I want everyone to read this."—Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books

Library Journal

★ 09/15/2016
During 24 hours in November 2013, ten people ages nine to 19 were shot and killed, not counting any suicides, which Younge (No Place Like Home) indicates were little reported. All boys, the youth include two murdered by friends playing with guns, one by the father of his half brother, and some whose attackers and motives are unknown. A British journalist of Barbadian descent who lived in the United States for 12 years, Younge brings a clear-eyed perspective to this fraught topic. He mourns and is angry but tempers his emotional response, judiciously and compellingly sharing pertinent realities, including the ubiquity of recognition by black parents that their child might die and an injustice known to families of color: the perceived moral character of a victim affects the public assessment of the "wrongness" of the killing. Younge also corrects misperceptions of black culture that inform the dangerous idea that the black community is rife with unfit parents and that "black-on-black" crime is a special category. VERDICT A heartrending compendium of the lives of American children taken by guns on an average day. Gripping and eloquent yet challenging in the brutality of its subject, this important book calls for empathy and should be widely read. A film adaptation starring David Oyelowo is in development.—Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2016-08-21
The tragic stories of 10 kids killed by gunfire.In this heart-rending, beautifully crafted book, Guardian editor at large Younge (The Speech: The Story Behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Dream, 2013, etc.) explores the least-known but most common form of American gun violence involving children and teenagers—not mass school shootings but single, isolated killings, an average of seven daily, in neighborhoods across the country. For 18 months, he investigated the lives of victims between the ages of 9 and 19 who were shot dead on an arbitrarily selected date (Nov. 23, 2013) in varying circumstances: while opening a door, from a passing car, while walking home at 1 a.m. from a McDonald’s, while playing with a gun with a friend. The victims are all poor, working-class males (seven black, two Hispanic, one white) who made poor decisions in “a brutalizing, unforgiving environment.” In Younge’s empathetic telling, they are seen as vulnerable children, some innocent, some not so, all loved by their families. The victims include Tyshon Anderson, 18, a Chicago gang member; Samuel Brightmon, 16, a trusting black kid caught in random gunfire in Dallas; Edwin Rajo, 16, an impulsive Honduran whose girlfriend did not realize there was a bullet in the gun’s chamber; and Tyler Dunn, 11, slain accidentally during rural Michigan’s hunting season. The author discusses such factors as the availability of guns, the challenges of parenting in poor neighborhoods, and the development of adolescent brains. “When it comes to protecting children around guns, parents are flawed and laws are clearly inadequate,” he writes. Younge says fear of gun violence in impoverished areas is such that one mother was happy her 14-year-old son was locked up—“it was safer for him to be incarcerated than to live in the neighborhood.” Important, deeply affecting, and certain to alarm readers who care about the lives of children in a gun-ridden society.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169635751
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	10/04/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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