Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Another Day in the Death of America A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge – review. O n the cover of Gary Younge’s new book, Another Day in the Death of America , there’s a full frontal of a smiling white American family. It’s a portrait of a 1950s American dream that stands in brilliant contrast to the reality of the country that is revealed beyond this cover. Take the story of 16-year-old African American Samuel Brightmon, who lived in Dallas. Having spent the evening at home with his family and a friend playing Uno (and cheating, “though not as egregiously as usual”), he offered to walk his friend part of the way home. When they passed a car with its headlights off but brake lights on they remarked on it but kept going. Not for long, however: a shot rang out, killing Samuel. “One minute we’re playing Uno,” his friend reflected, “10, 15 minutes later – boom.” Samuel’s wake was held on 29 November, the day he would have turned 17. No one has been charged with his murder: the working assumption being that this was just another case of mistaken identity. Samuel is one of the 10 people known to have been killed by guns on 23 November 2013. That’s the day Guardian journalist Gary Younge randomly selected for this book, after which he spent 18 months unearthing the stories that lay behind these young lives and their premature deaths. It is a gripping account that leads the reader through places as disparate as the vast corn and soya fields of Michigan and the killing fields of Chicago, where gunfire is now so common that dogs are said to have stopped barking at it. It’s a journey through a deeply troubled America that will make its reader want to join the author in howling at the moon. Ten young lives: 10 deaths from guns. But Another Day in the Death of America is not a book about gun control: it’s a book about what has happened in a country where there is no gun control. And although all the victims were at the beginning of their lives, this is not a book about innocents gunned down. It is, instead, a gripping account of the conditions that turn so many of America’s powerless into victims. There are stories to make the reader weep. Like those of nine-year-old Jaiden Dixon and 11-year-old Tyler Dunn, who had two things in common: the first that they both loved US reality TV show Duck Dynasty ; the second that they were both shot by people they knew – in Jaiden’s case, by his mother’s ex- boyfriend; in Tyler’s case, mistakenly, by his best friend. And there are other stories of those apparently less innocent – those who themselves may have killed, before in turn becoming victims. It’s easy to mourn lives cut down prematurely but what makes this book stand out is the strength of its analysis. Younge counters our understandable reaction to feel more deeply for “innocents” or “angels” by examining the structural roots of a crisis that has resulted in such everyday killings. He nails a succession of myths (or as he calls it, “frisks the straw men”): that, for example, America is a meritocracy, or that the current crisis resides in the failure of African American families (of the 10 deaths, seven were black, two Hispanic and one white) to discipline their children, or that talking about crime (which he forensically examines) is a taboo subject among African Americans. In his 2015 book, Between the World and Me , Ta-Nehisi Coates writes to his son about the danger to black bodies in America, and about the sting of his own father’s leather belt, which was the result of his fear of what might befall his son in the face of such dangers. This is a world that Younge also explores as he writes of the “cocoon world” in which black parents try to wrap their children in the hope of keeping them safe. And yet in the impoverished communities where most of these victims exist, Younge shows how this effort is often fruitless. One of the many strengths of his book is the sensitivity with which he approaches the families, thus allowing them to share their lived experiences with the reader. And what they share is heart-rending. Take, for example, Regina, mother of 18-year-old Tyshon Anderson, killed in a gang- related incident. “I hate the fact that he’s gone,” she says. “But I look at it like now I don’t have to worry about him being out there killing nobody else or nobody else trying to kill him. It was sad to see him laying there. But I’m just glad it’s over, because now every day I have to live is a day when they’re not going to kill him.” Another Day in the Death of America : A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge (2018, Trade Paperback) С самой низкой ценой, совершенно новый, неиспользованный, неоткрытый, неповрежденный товар в оригинальной упаковке (если товар поставляется в упаковке). Упаковка должна быть такой же, как упаковка этого товара в розничных магазинах, за исключением тех случаев, когда товар является изделием ручной работы или был упакован производителем в упаковку не для розничной продажи, например в коробку без маркировки или в пластиковый пакет. См. подробные сведения с дополнительным описанием товара. Book Review: Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge. On an average day in the USA, seven children and teenagers will be shot dead. In Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives , journalist Gary Younge tells the stories of ten lives lost on one single day: 23 November 2013. This is a powerful, timely and important contribution to the debate on US gun culture and how US society particularly treats its African American citizens, writes Peter Carrol . Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives . Gary Younge. Faber Publishing. 2016. Gary Younge’s powerful indictment of America’s gun culture. Find this book: To many outsider observers, America’s gun culture and its associated death toll is viewed with a mixture of confusion and bafflement. How can an advanced, sophisticated nation tolerate such daily carnage without taking action? This is the premise of Gary Younge’s book, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives , which features ten chapters reporting ten gun deaths that occurred on Saturday 23 November 2013. Younge is an experienced journalist who has reported on America for the Guardian for over a decade, and has written eloquently about his experiences of racism as a black British man living in and working in the USA. This book aims to bring his perspective as an ‘anthropological alien’ to provide an objective account of America’s gun culture; but as the deaths and injuries disproportionately affect America’s black population, Younge, father of two young children and long-term resident in inner-city Chicago, admits that he has a personal stake in the issue or, as he puts it, ‘black skin in a game where the odds are stacked against it’. The stories of the ten victims are told through their friends, families and through media and police reports, detailing the known circumstances of their deaths. Eight of the ten victims were African American, while all of them were under twenty: figures chosen to reflect the diversity of the average number of children killed by guns each day in America by other Americans. The November date was selected at random. Two of the victims were killed accidentally by their friends. Three appear to be implicated in gang violence and victims of reprisal shootings. Two victims appear to have been killed by stray bullets as they walked the streets. What unites them all is that their lives ended in an environment where access to guns is easy, and that they were citizens in a society that is unwilling, or unable, to do anything about it. Younge powerfully describes a world of disadvantage, street gangs warring over the drug trade and the everyday existence of young lives in the mostly poor towns and cities in which the killings took place. Some of the children’s parents are doing their best with the odds stacked firmly against them, while others are neglectful and largely absent, their lives destroyed by addiction and poverty. But Younge does not offer judgement on the children’s backgrounds, making clear that the tragedy of gun violence can randomly strike any person at any time in these environments: in this sense, all of the victims are innocent. Image Credit: Houston Gun show at the George R. Brown Convention Center (CC BY 2.0) Younge emphasises that this book is the first significant attention these victims have received beyond their immediate friends and family. The question that Younge poses several times is whether America would tolerate these deaths if they occurred in the areas and communities where the wealthy professional classes live. The societal response to the Sandy Hook shooting, where twenty school children and six adults were killed in their classrooms in a Connecticut school, is compared unfavourably with the relative invisibility of these deaths. But the fact that there was no legislative change to restrict gun access following the events at Sandy Hook, Younge reflects, makes the daily deaths that take place in America’s poor communities even less likely to draw a substantive response. One of the flaws in the book is that the device of selecting a day at random means that Younge is unable to expand his reporting to other victims if the families refused to be interviewed or to cooperate with his study. This constraint means that some of the profiles are inconsistent, and two of the victims’ case studies are instead filled with Younge’s analysis of the social, political and cultural factors that have led to America’s current impasse. Younge discusses how the history of slavery and the social, economic and political discrimination against African Americans in the twentieth and early twenty-first century are the main factors behind the higher probability of black men being unemployed, in prison or dead by the age of 25, compared to the white population. He provides a short history of the National Rifle Association (NRA), America’s powerful pro-gun lobby group, and the second amendment, which bestows the right for citizens to bear arms. Younge makes the argument that the sociological context rather than individual responsibility is the primary factor behind black underachievement in US society, supporting it with judicious use of academic studies and statistics. But what is missing from his analysis is any sense of the perspective of the owners of the 270 million guns in America or the NRA, whose views, motivations and deep commitment to protecting the second amendment are an important component of the victim’s deaths. How do these groups justify obstructing policies that would likely bring a reduction in gun deaths and prioritise their right to own guns over others’ right to live? Younge attributes blame chiefly to the NRA, but their voice is not heard, and his criticisms stand unchallenged. Despite these limitations, the book is a timely and important contribution to the debate on how US society treats its African American citizens. Since 23 November 2013, racial tensions have regularly erupted in the aftermath of allegations of police brutality or civilian fatalities, usually captured by citizens on their smartphones and circulated on social media. The killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have triggered serious outbreaks of rioting, with civil rights protesters coalescing around the #blacklivesmatter movement, offering the prospect of a concerted campaign to address America’s gun culture. But despite these developments, Younge closes the book on a pessimistic note, writing that an effective counter-action against the NRA and a change in the law remain highly unlikely, meaning that an end to the daily carnage and tragedy that stalk American life is an elusive prospect. Younge’s sober and reflective memorial to the victims befits the chilling truth that these children’s deaths at the hands of guns are so commonplace in America that they are banal, and that each day the tragedy will continue to roll on relentlessly. Peter Carrol is a Media Relations Officer at LSE and LSE MSc graduate in Politics and Communication. Read more by Peter Carrol. Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics. Another Day in the Death of America : A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives. Tragic as the Newtown Massacre is (20 children died that day, as well as some of their teachers), Gary Younge notes that as many children are killed by guns in America every few days, all year long . Читать весь отзыв. LibraryThing Review. Timely. One day in America, 10 gun deaths on that day. This is not a book that will leave me. I cried. I got angry. Written objectively. He gives you the information and allows you to decide if it is . Читать весь отзыв. Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives by Gary Younge. Born in Hertfordshire to Barbadian parents, he grew up in Stevenage until he was 17 when he went to Kassala, Sudan with Project Trust to teach English in a United Nations Eritrean refugee school. On his return he attended Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh where he studied French and Russian (Translating and Interpreting). In his final year at Heriot Watt he was awarded a bursary from The Guardian to study journalism at City University and started working at The Guardian in 1993. In 1996 he was awarded the Laurence Stern Fellowship, which sends a young British journalist to work at the Washington Post for three months. After several years of reporting from all over Europe, Africa, the US and the Caribbean Gary was appointed The Guardian’s US correspondent in 2003, writing first from New York and then Chicago. In 2015 he returned to London where he became The Guardian’s editor-at-large. His books have also received considerable acclaim. In 2017 Another Day in the Death of America won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize from Columbia Journalism School and Nieman Foundation. In the US the book was shortlisted for the Helen Berenstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism from New York Public Library and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award as well as longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction from the American Library Association. In Britain it was shortlisted for The Jhalak prize, The Orwell Prize for Books, The CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction and The Bread and Rose Award. Who Are We? was shortlisted for the Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. No Place Like Home was shortlisted for The Guardian’s first book award. In 2020 he left the Guardian to take up an academic post at the sociology department at Manchester University. Currently a visiting professor at London South Bank University, he was appointed the Belle Zeller Visiting Professor for Public Policy and Social Administration at Brooklyn College (CUNY) from 2009-2011.IIn 2020 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy. In 2019 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Warwick University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Mount Holyoke University in Massachusetts: "We are indebted to you for going off the beaten track and purposely veering into the spaces not sought by other journalists," read the latter's citation. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Arts in London. In 2017 he became an Honorary Fellow of Cardiff University. IIn 2016 he was made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2007 he was awarded honorary doctorates by both his alma mater, Heriot Watt University, and London South Bank University.