In Cold Blood meets Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family: A harrowing, profoundly personal investigation of the causes, effects, and communal toll of a deeply troubling crime-the brutal murder of three young children by their parents in the border city of Brownsville, Texas. On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas-one of America's poorest cities-John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already rundown, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. It was a place, neighbors felt, that was plagued by spiritual cancer. In 2008, journalist Laura Tillman covered the story for The Brownsville Herald. The questions it raised haunted her, particularly one asked by the sole member of the city's Heritage Council to oppose demolition: is there any such thing as an evil building? Her investigation took her far beyond that question, revealing the nature of the toll that the crime exacted on a city already wracked with poverty. It sprawled into a six-year inquiry into the larger significance of such acts, ones so difficult to imagine or explain that their perpetrators are often dismissed as monsters alien to humanity. With meticulous attention and stunning compassion, Tillman surveyed those surrounding the crimes, speaking with the lawyers who tried the case, the family's neighbors and relatives and teachers, even one of the murderers: John Allen Rubio himself, whom she corresponded with for years and ultimately met in person. The result is a brilliant exploration of some of our age's most important social issues, from poverty to mental illness to the death penalty, and a beautiful, profound meditation on the truly human forces that drive them. It is disturbing, insightful, and mesmerizing in equal measure.
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 author of the 400,000-copy bestseller On Killing reveals how violent video games have ushered in a new era of mass homicide--and what we must do about it.Paducah, Kentucky, 1997: a 14-year-old boy shoots eight students in a prayer circle at his...
Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, is a deeply researched—and deeply disturbing—history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present. As historian and educator ...
In a civilized society, violence is rarely the answer. But when it is-it's the only answer. The sound of breaking glass downstairs in the middle of the night. The words, "Move and you die." The hands on your child, or the knife to your throat. In t...
On July 20, 2012, twelve people were killed and seventy wounded at a mass shooting in a movie theater in Colorado. In 1999, twelve kids and one teacher at Columbine High School were murdered by two students. In 2012, twenty children and seven adults...
The most violent places in the world today are not at war. More people have died in Mexico in recent years than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. These parts of the world are instead buckling under a maelstrom of gangs, organized crime, political co...
The contemporary companion to Sun-tzu's The Art of War, this brilliant distillation of the strategies of war can help us gain mastery in the modern world.
Why is an unarmed young black woman who knocks on a stranger's front door to ask for help after her car breaks down perceived to be so threatening that he shoots her dead? Why do we fear infrequent acts of terrorism more far more common acts of vio...
We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding--"tribes." This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival. Decades before ...
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