A Peculiar Indifference, Elliott Currie
A Peculiar Indifference, Elliott Currie
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A Peculiar Indifference
The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America

Author: Elliott Currie

Narrator: Sean Patrick Hopkins

Unabridged: 6 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/15/2020


Synopsis

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a devastating exploration of the racial disparities in violent death and injury in America and a blueprint for ending this fundamental social injustice

About 170,000 black Americans have died in homicides just since the year 2000. Violence takes more years of life from black men than cancer, stroke, and diabetes combined; a young black man in the United States has a fifteen times greater chance of dying from violence than his white counterpart. Even black women suffer violent death at a higher rate than white men, despite homicide’s usual gender patterns. Yet while the country has been rightly outraged by the recent spate of police killings of black Americans, the shocking amount of “everyday” violence that plagues African American communities receives far less attention, and has nearly disappeared as a target of public policy.

As acclaimed criminologist Elliott Currie makes clear, this pervasive violence is a direct result of the continuing social and economic marginalization of many black communities in America. Those conditions help perpetuate a level of preventable trauma and needless suffering that has no counterpart anywhere in the developed world. Compelling and accessible, drawing on a rich array of both classic and contemporary research, A Peculiar Indifference describes the dimensions and consequences of this enduring emergency, explains its causes, and offers an urgent plea for long-overdue social action to end it.

A Macmillan Audio production from Metropolitan Books

About Elliott Currie

Elliott Currie is the author of Crime and Punishment in America, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and numerous other acclaimed works on crime and criminal justice. He is a professor of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jessaka on November 18, 2022

What About Chicago When I read Tim Wise’s book, “Dear White America,” I thought that I had the proof that I needed to then prove to certain people that blacks were not a violent race. I had read in an article, one that Tim Wise had suggested, that only one or two percent of blacks commit violent crim......more

Goodreads review by Jessica on October 04, 2020

Elliot Currie is a Pulitzer Prize finalist who has clearly done his homework in the writing of this book. Currie references a number of studies and statistics in A Peculiar Indifference in his analysis of the why, how and what of violence in Black America. Currie digs down into why Black people by f......more

Goodreads review by J Earl on May 26, 2020

A Peculiar Indifference: The Neglected Toll of Violence on Black America by Elliot Currie is a phenomenal book that both explains the situation in some detail and offers solutions that can resolve the problems. Not simply some bandaids or policy meant as a campaign votegetter, but genuine solutions.......more

Goodreads review by April on May 19, 2022

3.8✨ A Peculiar Indifference focuses on the criminalization of Black youth and the impacts it has on their livelihood — everything from schooling to life expectancy. Curries claims early on this isn't a textbook but I felt pretty duped by the end. Despite weaving together some interviews, studies, an......more

Goodreads review by Jade on September 08, 2020

In A Peculiar Indifference Elliott Currie provides us with a detailed overview of violent crime in the US, and how it disproportionately affects Black people and communities. This study analyzes the toll that violence has taken and continues to take on Black men, women, and children, compares it to......more


Awards

  • New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year