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The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic
Malcolm Gladwell's most urgent book a provocative investigation of America's epidemic of gun violence.
The United States has far more homicides than any of its peers around the world. Why?
In this groundbreaking book, Malcolm Gladwell explores the American "peculiarity"--how the world's wealthiest country came to suffer from a problem typically only seen in the world's poorest countries.
Drawing on original interviews, archival and social science research, and his trademark insight, Gladwell approaches the American paradox through a series of stories. What can we learn from the miracle of a young gunshot victim in Washington, D.C.? How have the legal troubles of a seventeenth-century English knight influenced American attempts at gun control? Why would a European police chief be baffled by the graduation ceremony at any American police academy?
In a sweeping narrative, Gladwell travels from a shooting range in North Carolina, to the South Side of Chicago, to an old plantation house in Alabama, painting a picture of a country that does not understand its most pressing social problem, and as result, does not understand how to fix it.
The United States has far more homicides than any of its peers around the world. Why?
In this groundbreaking book, Malcolm Gladwell explores the American "peculiarity"--how the world's wealthiest country came to suffer from a problem typically only seen in the world's poorest countries.
Drawing on original interviews, archival and social science research, and his trademark insight, Gladwell approaches the American paradox through a series of stories. What can we learn from the miracle of a young gunshot victim in Washington, D.C.? How have the legal troubles of a seventeenth-century English knight influenced American attempts at gun control? Why would a European police chief be baffled by the graduation ceremony at any American police academy?
In a sweeping narrative, Gladwell travels from a shooting range in North Carolina, to the South Side of Chicago, to an old plantation house in Alabama, painting a picture of a country that does not understand its most pressing social problem, and as result, does not understand how to fix it.
6 pages, Audio CD
First published September 29, 2026
About the author
Malcolm Gladwell
150 books40.8k followersMalcolm Timothy Gladwell is a Canadian journalist, author, and public speaker. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has published seven books. He is also the host of the podcast Revisionist History and co-founder of the podcast company Pushkin Industries.
Gladwell's writings often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences, such as sociology and psychology, and make frequent and extended use of academic work. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2011.
Gladwell's writings often deal with the unexpected implications of research in the social sciences, such as sociology and psychology, and make frequent and extended use of academic work. Gladwell was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2011.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 781 reviews
October 1, 2026
Malcolm Gladwell is soooo good at coming up with arguments and arguing them in a way that feels well reasoned and researched. He comes up with stories and anecdotes that are compelling but don't hold up under scrutiny. That is the case with this book. He also seems to not have thesis in this book. There is no diagnosis or solution or theory. He just offers observations dispassionately so as to seem above the fray and smarter than everyone else. This book ignores historical context, slurps the police (his fave), and employs the phrase "the most arbitrary of reasons" to name racism. Gladwell is gonna Gladwell.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Malcolm Gladwell has done it again. He has a way of telling stories by talking to the right people and asking the right questions. He comes at popular subjects from angles that often others leave undisturbed. For instance, I came into this book as an advocate of “defund the police”; not a staunch advocate mind you, but one that definitely feels reshuffling of police resources needs to be explored. But Malcolm Gladwell has challenged me to the point, where I’m rethinking my advocacy. Damnit Mr. Gladwell!! This of course speaks to the power of his prose. And it’s not like he is making a strong argument for increasing police numbers, but through his conversations and nuanced angles his case becomes clearer, if not compelling. That policing discourse is part of the larger discussion around gun violence and how America has an inability to have honest dialogue.
“A conversation becomes dishonest when either side pretends that something is consequential when it is not, avoids the right conclusion just because it is difficult, or through laziness or indifference blinds itself to the truth. This is a dishonest conversation.”
He divides the book into three parts, Dishonest Conversations, where the gun violence issue in America is addressed, along with an eye opening and honest discussion about the 2nd Amendment, the Constitutional critique is worth the price of the book alone. The other two parts are Misdiagnoses and Moral Absurdity. In each of these sections, the chapters are filled with Gladwell anecdotes and effective questions built around interesting stories that is classic Malcolm Gladwell.
“The American Way of Killing is the story of a country that has lost its way.” I endorse that sentiment 100%. This book reads quickly and you lament its end. As I was hungry for more stories more subjects more analysis. Just more.
“……..and if there’s a theme that runs through all the stories I’ve told, it’s that Americans don’t see their problem clearly. They think they have a problem with crime. They don’t.
They have a problem with violence. They think they are overpoliced. They aren’t. They are underpoliced. They think murderers behave as deliberately as they do in murder mysteries and on Law & Order. They don’t. Homicide is mostly just young men getting into arguments and losing their heads. They think their Constitution enshrines a basic right to own guns. It doesn’t. The founding fathers were just trying to cut a deal with slave owners. They think their violent crime is coming down. But is it? Or are people like Eddie Cornwell just making it invisible?”
This is one you’ll want to read and discuss. A big thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown & Co. for an advanced DRC. Book will explode into stores and onto bestsellers lists 09.29.26
“A conversation becomes dishonest when either side pretends that something is consequential when it is not, avoids the right conclusion just because it is difficult, or through laziness or indifference blinds itself to the truth. This is a dishonest conversation.”
He divides the book into three parts, Dishonest Conversations, where the gun violence issue in America is addressed, along with an eye opening and honest discussion about the 2nd Amendment, the Constitutional critique is worth the price of the book alone. The other two parts are Misdiagnoses and Moral Absurdity. In each of these sections, the chapters are filled with Gladwell anecdotes and effective questions built around interesting stories that is classic Malcolm Gladwell.
“The American Way of Killing is the story of a country that has lost its way.” I endorse that sentiment 100%. This book reads quickly and you lament its end. As I was hungry for more stories more subjects more analysis. Just more.
“……..and if there’s a theme that runs through all the stories I’ve told, it’s that Americans don’t see their problem clearly. They think they have a problem with crime. They don’t.
They have a problem with violence. They think they are overpoliced. They aren’t. They are underpoliced. They think murderers behave as deliberately as they do in murder mysteries and on Law & Order. They don’t. Homicide is mostly just young men getting into arguments and losing their heads. They think their Constitution enshrines a basic right to own guns. It doesn’t. The founding fathers were just trying to cut a deal with slave owners. They think their violent crime is coming down. But is it? Or are people like Eddie Cornwell just making it invisible?”
This is one you’ll want to read and discuss. A big thanks to NetGalley and Little Brown & Co. for an advanced DRC. Book will explode into stores and onto bestsellers lists 09.29.26
September 30, 2026
There was a mass shooting last year at the grade school I went to growing up, killing two children and injuring 29 others. The school is in my neighborhood. This happened to my community. So, The American Way of Killing hit way too close to home.
This book turns the pro-gun-rights argument on its head and presents substantive research in such a way that it seems unimaginable that Americans would ever argue about gun control. I was so engrossed that I was constantly talking to myself as I listened (at the grocery store, while running errands, didn't care).
The book is organized into three almost equally compelling parts: Dishonest Conversations, Misdiagnoses, and Moral Absurdity. The first two are all absorbing. I'm going to reread the latter. (I may have been too tired. I binged the book straight through.)
The Second Amendment background is fascinating, as is the information on policing rates and the insights from inner-city trauma surgeons.
It never occurred to me that the increasing number of gunshot victims who live because of medical advancements can make homicide rates appear to be going down when, in fact, they're not. And because we measure gun violence by death, these skewed statistics (less murder, more aggravated assault) prevent us from having honest conversations about policy reform. As always, Gladwell finds new ways to look at old problems.
If you’re deciding between print or audio, the audio is only six hours, moves like a podcast, and includes live interviews with many of the referenced experts. It also makes the 17th-century case law easier to absorb (which, somehow, is absolutely riveting. No joke).
This book turns the pro-gun-rights argument on its head and presents substantive research in such a way that it seems unimaginable that Americans would ever argue about gun control. I was so engrossed that I was constantly talking to myself as I listened (at the grocery store, while running errands, didn't care).
The book is organized into three almost equally compelling parts: Dishonest Conversations, Misdiagnoses, and Moral Absurdity. The first two are all absorbing. I'm going to reread the latter. (I may have been too tired. I binged the book straight through.)
The Second Amendment background is fascinating, as is the information on policing rates and the insights from inner-city trauma surgeons.
It never occurred to me that the increasing number of gunshot victims who live because of medical advancements can make homicide rates appear to be going down when, in fact, they're not. And because we measure gun violence by death, these skewed statistics (less murder, more aggravated assault) prevent us from having honest conversations about policy reform. As always, Gladwell finds new ways to look at old problems.
If you’re deciding between print or audio, the audio is only six hours, moves like a podcast, and includes live interviews with many of the referenced experts. It also makes the 17th-century case law easier to absorb (which, somehow, is absolutely riveting. No joke).
Review of advance copy
Malcolm Gladwell is a compelling, accessible storyteller. That makes this book a quick and easy read. Here he attempts to expand upon the 'dishonest' conversation of gun violence in the U.S., to pretty meagre success. What I enjoyed most was the professionals whose experiences in medicine, criminology, youth education, and law are enlightening and fascinating. I also appreciated his historical contextualization of the Second Amendment--that it was designed to proliferate and protect the role of slave patrols (though Gladwell could have better analogized this crucial fact to modern times). Ultimately, I feel Gladwell fails to achieve a radical reframing of the gun violence conversation, offering instead some (mostly) interesting facts and anecdotes that did little to change my mind about how gun violence operates in the U.S.
The most concerning aspect of this book is that Gladwell manages to ENTIRELY omit the daily reality of "police-involved shootings" (aka police murder civilians). How, in a book about American gun violence, does Gladwell manage to interview numerous police officers and chiefs, but no victims of police violence? Numerous times, Gladwell states that America is "underpoliced, not overpoliced." He does this without providing ANY evidence about how increasing police funding would reduce violence or murder, except saying "that's how Europe does it," despite it being an entirely different continent with different cultures, legislation, and histories. He even decides to dunk on Mariame Kaba, abolitionists, and Black Lives Matters activists, invalidating the extreme racism demonstrated across American police force.
Gladwell barely touches issues of race and class, except for briefly acknowledging the impact of medical racism on ambulance response times. He also ignores the role of the mainstream media in proliferating false, racialized narratives about gun violence, as well as the fact that America's violence is also deeply entwined with its exorbitantly warmongering military industrial complex (the biggest in the world). While there may be some benefits in his choice to circumnavigate "bipartisan" politics, it feels ahistorical that Gladwell ignores the broader culture of violence, hierarchies, patriarchy, and imperialism in which his subject is nested.
The most concerning aspect of this book is that Gladwell manages to ENTIRELY omit the daily reality of "police-involved shootings" (aka police murder civilians). How, in a book about American gun violence, does Gladwell manage to interview numerous police officers and chiefs, but no victims of police violence? Numerous times, Gladwell states that America is "underpoliced, not overpoliced." He does this without providing ANY evidence about how increasing police funding would reduce violence or murder, except saying "that's how Europe does it," despite it being an entirely different continent with different cultures, legislation, and histories. He even decides to dunk on Mariame Kaba, abolitionists, and Black Lives Matters activists, invalidating the extreme racism demonstrated across American police force.
Gladwell barely touches issues of race and class, except for briefly acknowledging the impact of medical racism on ambulance response times. He also ignores the role of the mainstream media in proliferating false, racialized narratives about gun violence, as well as the fact that America's violence is also deeply entwined with its exorbitantly warmongering military industrial complex (the biggest in the world). While there may be some benefits in his choice to circumnavigate "bipartisan" politics, it feels ahistorical that Gladwell ignores the broader culture of violence, hierarchies, patriarchy, and imperialism in which his subject is nested.
October 7, 2026
4.5 stars — Finished in less than 24 hours, still thinking about it
Malcolm Gladwell’s The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic is one of the most engaging and thought-provoking books I’ve ever read. I finished it in less than 24 hours. Yes, I was a bit tired the next day, but the book kept resonating in my thoughts. I may not agree with everything Gladwell presents, but he certainly kept me turning the pages.
I usually don’t care for books built from podcasts, but this one felt fresh rather than like a warmed-over rehash. I’ve read some of Gladwell’s work before and found it just okay. This book was different. It even convinced me to add episodes of his Revisionist History podcast to my listening rotation.
This subject is personal. Members of my family have been random victims of gun violence, and students I’ve worked with in Houston and Chicago have been shot. When I read about this epidemic, I think about people I know and care about. The book’s discussion of prevention left me wondering whether some of the shootings that touched our lives might have been prevented.
One of the strongest ideas is the distinction between crime generally and “expressive violence”—violence arising from anger, humiliation, arguments, and impulsive reactions. Calling America’s problem simply a “crime problem” misses something essential about how often our violence becomes lethal. In some comparisons, London and Paris have higher recorded robbery rates than major American cities, yet much lower homicide rates. Although international comparisons require care, the distinction matters: the frequency of crime and the likelihood of being killed are different questions.
A confrontation that might otherwise end with harsh words or a fistfight can become a killing when a gun is within reach. That possibility changes the consequences of an impulsive act.
The discussion of suicide was especially important to me. I don’t own a gun, mainly because of the increased suicide risk associated with having one available. That risk weighs heavily in my decision. The possibility that a moment of crisis can become irreversible deserves a much larger place in our conversations about gun ownership and safety.
Gladwell also challenged my assumptions about policing. His comparisons of police staffing in American and other industrialized cities made me reconsider whether we devote enough resources to preventing violence. I found the argument for effective police presence compelling, while recognizing that staffing numbers alone cannot explain or solve the problem.
Another striking discussion concerned trauma care. Advances in emergency medicine save people who might once have died from gunshot wounds. Yet access to that lifesaving care is unequal, particularly in rural and poorer communities. Death counts alone cannot convey the full toll of gun violence. Survival can still mean lasting injury, trauma, and a changed life.
As someone who reads a great deal of American history, I found the Second Amendment chapter particularly engaging. The connections among militias, slavery, and the founding deserve serious examination, even though historians disagree about how much they explain the amendment’s origins. The discussion of centuries-old English legal precedents and their use in modern Supreme Court decisions also gave me plenty to ponder.
I found this a well-researched book, though Gladwell leaned on emotional appeals in a few sections that felt carried over from his podcast. That was a minor reservation. Overall, the book challenged my assumptions and offered possible solutions worth considering. I kept returning to the people whose lives might be spared if we became better at prevention.
If the subject interests you at all, pick it up at your favorite independent bookstore. It deserves a wide audience. I bought a signed first edition at Lake Forest Book Store and paired it with the Audible audiobook. I finished both with plenty to think about—and a strong desire to keep this conversation going.
4.5 stars.
https://substack.com/@lposse1
Malcolm Gladwell’s The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic is one of the most engaging and thought-provoking books I’ve ever read. I finished it in less than 24 hours. Yes, I was a bit tired the next day, but the book kept resonating in my thoughts. I may not agree with everything Gladwell presents, but he certainly kept me turning the pages.
I usually don’t care for books built from podcasts, but this one felt fresh rather than like a warmed-over rehash. I’ve read some of Gladwell’s work before and found it just okay. This book was different. It even convinced me to add episodes of his Revisionist History podcast to my listening rotation.
This subject is personal. Members of my family have been random victims of gun violence, and students I’ve worked with in Houston and Chicago have been shot. When I read about this epidemic, I think about people I know and care about. The book’s discussion of prevention left me wondering whether some of the shootings that touched our lives might have been prevented.
One of the strongest ideas is the distinction between crime generally and “expressive violence”—violence arising from anger, humiliation, arguments, and impulsive reactions. Calling America’s problem simply a “crime problem” misses something essential about how often our violence becomes lethal. In some comparisons, London and Paris have higher recorded robbery rates than major American cities, yet much lower homicide rates. Although international comparisons require care, the distinction matters: the frequency of crime and the likelihood of being killed are different questions.
A confrontation that might otherwise end with harsh words or a fistfight can become a killing when a gun is within reach. That possibility changes the consequences of an impulsive act.
The discussion of suicide was especially important to me. I don’t own a gun, mainly because of the increased suicide risk associated with having one available. That risk weighs heavily in my decision. The possibility that a moment of crisis can become irreversible deserves a much larger place in our conversations about gun ownership and safety.
Gladwell also challenged my assumptions about policing. His comparisons of police staffing in American and other industrialized cities made me reconsider whether we devote enough resources to preventing violence. I found the argument for effective police presence compelling, while recognizing that staffing numbers alone cannot explain or solve the problem.
Another striking discussion concerned trauma care. Advances in emergency medicine save people who might once have died from gunshot wounds. Yet access to that lifesaving care is unequal, particularly in rural and poorer communities. Death counts alone cannot convey the full toll of gun violence. Survival can still mean lasting injury, trauma, and a changed life.
As someone who reads a great deal of American history, I found the Second Amendment chapter particularly engaging. The connections among militias, slavery, and the founding deserve serious examination, even though historians disagree about how much they explain the amendment’s origins. The discussion of centuries-old English legal precedents and their use in modern Supreme Court decisions also gave me plenty to ponder.
I found this a well-researched book, though Gladwell leaned on emotional appeals in a few sections that felt carried over from his podcast. That was a minor reservation. Overall, the book challenged my assumptions and offered possible solutions worth considering. I kept returning to the people whose lives might be spared if we became better at prevention.
If the subject interests you at all, pick it up at your favorite independent bookstore. It deserves a wide audience. I bought a signed first edition at Lake Forest Book Store and paired it with the Audible audiobook. I finished both with plenty to think about—and a strong desire to keep this conversation going.
4.5 stars.
https://substack.com/@lposse1
October 24, 2026
I don't fully trust Malcolm Gladwell. Back when I first read The Tipping Point and Blink, I thought he was brilliant, but as I learned more, I discovered that his analysis was almost always shallow and sometimes wrong. He would latch onto an interesting idea and then focus more on how to turn it into a bestselling book than on how to cover the subject with depth and integrity. Talking to Strangers and Outliers were more of the same. Then I found out that he had a history as a corporate shill and lost all respect for him. But his book on Reconstruction with Barack Obama and now this one have redeemed him a little bit for me. Everything he says about American gun violence here seems right to me - the dishonesty of the positions on guns, the sad comparisons with other countries, the fact that gun control is not about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, but really about reducing suicides and crimes of passion, and for me, most tellingly, that the militia clause of the second amendment was not about ensuring that we could continue to have brave minutemen at future Concords but about securing support for the Constitution from Virginia slaveholders who wanted to be sure that they could continue armed patrols to suppress the risk of slave rebellions. Still as I read, I kept wondering if I could trust him. Are there more places in this book where he has interpreted facts for dramatic effect or glossed over deeper issues as he has done so frequently in the past? Maybe so, but nothing popped out at me. Maybe with years of experience and having achieved fame and a comfortable level of wealth, he has developed greater integrity. I hope so.
October 7, 2026
Some good points are made, but I’m still hung up on his repeated assertion that reducing gun violence hinges on increasing the number of police, and his belief that defunding the police is misguided and correlated with increased violence. He utterly omits how defunding the police aims to reallocate funds to social services that address the root of violent crime.
August 3, 2026
A big thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for letting me read an early copy of this book.
I’ve always enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s books. I finish each one feeling like I’ve learned something new about the world and gained a different perspective on how to understand its complexities.
In this book, Gladwell tackles one of the most controversial issues facing the United States today: the rise in gun violence. Drawing on examples from both the United States and around the world, he explores how this problem has grown over time and attempts to uncover some of the underlying factors contributing to it.
This is an issue I care deeply about. As an elementary school teacher, school safety is something that is always on my mind. Since the tragedy at Uvalde, I’ve followed efforts to reduce gun violence and make our schools and communities safer. The reality is that you never know what could happen in a public place, and that uncertainty weighs heavily on many educators.
Perhaps I missed something, but I found myself wishing the book spent more time discussing potential solutions. While Gladwell does an excellent job examining the problem and its possible causes, I would have appreciated more discussion about ways to combat the increase in gun violence. Of course, this is an incredibly complex issue that experts, policymakers, and communities continue to grapple with, and there are no easy answers. Still, I finished the book hoping to come away with a few ideas that might inspire meaningful change and help make the world a safer place.
I’ve always enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s books. I finish each one feeling like I’ve learned something new about the world and gained a different perspective on how to understand its complexities.
In this book, Gladwell tackles one of the most controversial issues facing the United States today: the rise in gun violence. Drawing on examples from both the United States and around the world, he explores how this problem has grown over time and attempts to uncover some of the underlying factors contributing to it.
This is an issue I care deeply about. As an elementary school teacher, school safety is something that is always on my mind. Since the tragedy at Uvalde, I’ve followed efforts to reduce gun violence and make our schools and communities safer. The reality is that you never know what could happen in a public place, and that uncertainty weighs heavily on many educators.
Perhaps I missed something, but I found myself wishing the book spent more time discussing potential solutions. While Gladwell does an excellent job examining the problem and its possible causes, I would have appreciated more discussion about ways to combat the increase in gun violence. Of course, this is an incredibly complex issue that experts, policymakers, and communities continue to grapple with, and there are no easy answers. Still, I finished the book hoping to come away with a few ideas that might inspire meaningful change and help make the world a safer place.
October 5, 2026
The audio version of this is exceptionally good and almost feels like a long, extremely well-edited podcast. We have different voices taken from interviews and music. It makes for good effect. The book itself is basically a collection of essays that tries to explain the problems of the American gun problem.
Early in the book there is an interview with an ER doctor, who himself has lost 15 close friends in his lifetime, to gun violence. From a European perspective that is staggering. From my own perspective, it is horrifying, 15 close friends would be most of my inner circle. I only know of a couple of gun deaths among my acquaintances and those were suicides with hunting rifles. I have had one homicide among the family circle and that was certainly traumatic enough. The weapon was a knife. Knives have limited range.
This is what I learned from the book.
1. The second amendment was an amendment to placate nervous plantation owners, letting them arm their own local militias to keep disgruntled slaves in check. The complete lack of checks and balances on the right to bear arms has had dire consequences, to say the least.
2. The problem with the police isn't that there are too many of them, but that there are too few. European police are much more numerous, but since they are not overworked they can forge bonds with their local communities and are extremely unlikely to use excessive violence.
3. The falling homicide rates from gun violence is often a direct result of better hospital care. American doctors are extremely good at handling gun shot wounds and have become much better in the past few decades because of the vast amount experience. If you look at gun violence without deadly outcomes, this has generally increased. More people tend to survive. Unless of course you're black and living in a disadvantaged neighborhood, because the distance to an ER has a direct relationship with survival rates.
4. "It's not the gun that kills, but the person who holds it". This is of course the kind of argument that people who carries guns say all the time. The problem though, is that most gun killings are NOT premeditated. They occur in the spur of the moment, because of escalating arguments and misunderstandings. So the main problem isn't necessarily the person holding the gun but how proliferate the guns are and how easy they are to access. Furthermore, most gun fatalities are suicides. Suicidal people tend to get over their self murderous tendencies if given time and opportunity.
Gun ownership needs be restricted and regulated because people are volatile. You need to prove that you have a use of a fire arm and that you are of sound mind. Guns should not be allowed in public spaces and gun owners need to lock their weapons away when not in use. I don't really understand why this needs to be so hard. And again, I am so grateful to be living on this side of the pond.
Early in the book there is an interview with an ER doctor, who himself has lost 15 close friends in his lifetime, to gun violence. From a European perspective that is staggering. From my own perspective, it is horrifying, 15 close friends would be most of my inner circle. I only know of a couple of gun deaths among my acquaintances and those were suicides with hunting rifles. I have had one homicide among the family circle and that was certainly traumatic enough. The weapon was a knife. Knives have limited range.
This is what I learned from the book.
1. The second amendment was an amendment to placate nervous plantation owners, letting them arm their own local militias to keep disgruntled slaves in check. The complete lack of checks and balances on the right to bear arms has had dire consequences, to say the least.
2. The problem with the police isn't that there are too many of them, but that there are too few. European police are much more numerous, but since they are not overworked they can forge bonds with their local communities and are extremely unlikely to use excessive violence.
3. The falling homicide rates from gun violence is often a direct result of better hospital care. American doctors are extremely good at handling gun shot wounds and have become much better in the past few decades because of the vast amount experience. If you look at gun violence without deadly outcomes, this has generally increased. More people tend to survive. Unless of course you're black and living in a disadvantaged neighborhood, because the distance to an ER has a direct relationship with survival rates.
4. "It's not the gun that kills, but the person who holds it". This is of course the kind of argument that people who carries guns say all the time. The problem though, is that most gun killings are NOT premeditated. They occur in the spur of the moment, because of escalating arguments and misunderstandings. So the main problem isn't necessarily the person holding the gun but how proliferate the guns are and how easy they are to access. Furthermore, most gun fatalities are suicides. Suicidal people tend to get over their self murderous tendencies if given time and opportunity.
Gun ownership needs be restricted and regulated because people are volatile. You need to prove that you have a use of a fire arm and that you are of sound mind. Guns should not be allowed in public spaces and gun owners need to lock their weapons away when not in use. I don't really understand why this needs to be so hard. And again, I am so grateful to be living on this side of the pond.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Malcolm Gladwell never fails to engage and provoke. This short read is well worth the time.
Gladwell posits that Americans don't have the real story when it comes to violence in our country. Almost everything we know is filtered through the media and through the politicians and most of it is either flat out wrong or simplified. It's hard to solve the real problem is you don't even know what it is. Defining the problem is the first step toward solving it.
(As an aside, I can't imagine this is the only issue in which our viewpoints lack nuance for the same exact reasons; it's frightening).
Gladwell divides violence in America into two categories: 1) that which is carefully planned in the furtherance of personal gain and 2) that which arises out of disagreements that escalate.
Guess which is more? Hint: It's not #1.
Gladwell's goes on to analyze how the U.S. could really do a much better job with handling the most common episodes of violence, and he uses fascinating data comparisons with other countries to illuminate his points.
Very worthwhile, and I hope the country reads it widely. What's extra refreshing is the fact that the politics are not clearly right leaning nor clearly left leaning because both sides have it SO wrong.
Gladwell posits that Americans don't have the real story when it comes to violence in our country. Almost everything we know is filtered through the media and through the politicians and most of it is either flat out wrong or simplified. It's hard to solve the real problem is you don't even know what it is. Defining the problem is the first step toward solving it.
(As an aside, I can't imagine this is the only issue in which our viewpoints lack nuance for the same exact reasons; it's frightening).
Gladwell divides violence in America into two categories: 1) that which is carefully planned in the furtherance of personal gain and 2) that which arises out of disagreements that escalate.
Guess which is more? Hint: It's not #1.
Gladwell's goes on to analyze how the U.S. could really do a much better job with handling the most common episodes of violence, and he uses fascinating data comparisons with other countries to illuminate his points.
Very worthwhile, and I hope the country reads it widely. What's extra refreshing is the fact that the politics are not clearly right leaning nor clearly left leaning because both sides have it SO wrong.
Review of advance copy received from Storygraph
Writing from Canada, my understanding of gun violence is slightly different than the average American (wholly different, actually). There are certain parts of the book however, that should bear moral weight regardless of gun law variations across the continent. The narratives of people whose lives and careers intersect with gun violence--trauma surgeons and doctors, members of the police force, legal researchers and experts, lawyers, historians, and ordinary citizens--round out the raw data it shares. It is written in the same narrative vein as his other books, which make it very readable, if not urgently so. As a testament to this, I tore through it in one morning before work.
There were a few points in the book that shocked me, but I won't spoil the best bits and go all out in this review. I was astounded however, that a popular author like Malcolm Gladwell has a higher research standard when considering historical case law around gun access, than Supreme Court judges. He details the Sullivan case heard before the Supreme Court in 2021 and offers more rigorously researched an opinion than the judges hearing it who limited it to a 1600s era bigoted merchant, Sir John Knight. Judicial commentary from the case reveals the profoundly low bar that exists for a bench that is lionized as caring about and serving "the people". It makes you question whether the Supreme Court justices are really beholden to the impartiality they might claim is part of their job. I was also a bit shocked to learn that Texan and other state laws were stricter in the 1800s than they are today.
There were a few points in the book that shocked me, but I won't spoil the best bits and go all out in this review. I was astounded however, that a popular author like Malcolm Gladwell has a higher research standard when considering historical case law around gun access, than Supreme Court judges. He details the Sullivan case heard before the Supreme Court in 2021 and offers more rigorously researched an opinion than the judges hearing it who limited it to a 1600s era bigoted merchant, Sir John Knight. Judicial commentary from the case reveals the profoundly low bar that exists for a bench that is lionized as caring about and serving "the people". It makes you question whether the Supreme Court justices are really beholden to the impartiality they might claim is part of their job. I was also a bit shocked to learn that Texan and other state laws were stricter in the 1800s than they are today.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Malcolm Gladwell is one of a kind. He writes sociology about real life cultural issues and— every time— he has a way of making me see something in a completely different way. This book is compelling and important. While most of us agree that gun violence is tragic and a huge problem in America, often no one has any solutions for it. And while he isn’t a policymaker, Gladwell is going to challenge all of your assumptions and show you big correlations that you have been missing. My mouth just dropped open, several times. And this is a problem I feel very strongly about. I don’t want to spoil any of his data for you, because I truly want you to have the same jaw dropping moments as you read. I have to say, this book changed my worldview.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Gladwell's new book takes on America's relationship to guns, arguing that our inability to fully understand the problem of gun violence prevents us from taking effective steps to end it. Each chapter offers a slightly different perspective, from the historical (Madison's development of the second amendment, the inaccurate popular view of 19th century Dodge City) to the present-day (the cyclical relationship between increased gun shot wounds and American medical expertise at treating them). Many of these perspectives were new to me, and I appreciate the opportunity to enter conversations about gun violence with more information and nuance. Where Gladwell lost me a bit is in his treatment of racism, which he alternately argues defines America's relationship to guns and ignores.
Gladwell clearly sees racism as inextricable from the problem of American gun violence. In different chapters, he contends that the second amendment is the product of Southern planter anxieties about the rebellious potential of enslaved people and that modern-day racism leads more Black people to die of treatable gunshot wounds, therefore leading to artificially prolonged jail sentences for Black assailants. These points both seem important, though Gladwell offers little guidance about what to do about them. Instead, he argues that a major problem with America's relationship to gun violence is that we have too few police, in a chapter that feels notable for the careful way it avoids discussing racism. For example, Gladwell attributes George Floyd's murder to the actions of a rogue cop, a framing that ignores the other officers present and the wave of support he received in the aftermath. He suggests that BLM activists calling for reductions in police forces misunderstand the problem--that police brutality is a function of officer stress at being stretched too thin rather than a phenomenon shaped by the historical and current racial dynamics that Gladwell points to in other parts of the book. In essence, Gladwell seems to be arguing that racism is a fundamental part of understanding the problem of American gun violence but immaterial to its solution, despite the fact that modern-day policing grew out of the same history of slavery and slave patrols that he points to in his discussion of the second amendment.
Gladwell's clarity and urgency on the issue of gun violence is undermined somewhat by his contradictory position on race. I also wished, at the end of the book, for a stronger call to action: one informed by all the nuance and context that Gladwell clearly believes is essential to our understanding of this most American of problems.
Gladwell clearly sees racism as inextricable from the problem of American gun violence. In different chapters, he contends that the second amendment is the product of Southern planter anxieties about the rebellious potential of enslaved people and that modern-day racism leads more Black people to die of treatable gunshot wounds, therefore leading to artificially prolonged jail sentences for Black assailants. These points both seem important, though Gladwell offers little guidance about what to do about them. Instead, he argues that a major problem with America's relationship to gun violence is that we have too few police, in a chapter that feels notable for the careful way it avoids discussing racism. For example, Gladwell attributes George Floyd's murder to the actions of a rogue cop, a framing that ignores the other officers present and the wave of support he received in the aftermath. He suggests that BLM activists calling for reductions in police forces misunderstand the problem--that police brutality is a function of officer stress at being stretched too thin rather than a phenomenon shaped by the historical and current racial dynamics that Gladwell points to in other parts of the book. In essence, Gladwell seems to be arguing that racism is a fundamental part of understanding the problem of American gun violence but immaterial to its solution, despite the fact that modern-day policing grew out of the same history of slavery and slave patrols that he points to in his discussion of the second amendment.
Gladwell's clarity and urgency on the issue of gun violence is undermined somewhat by his contradictory position on race. I also wished, at the end of the book, for a stronger call to action: one informed by all the nuance and context that Gladwell clearly believes is essential to our understanding of this most American of problems.
September 29, 2026
***.5
An interesting look at gun violence in the US, done in Gladwell's signature style. The audiobook format is perfect, as he narrates it himself and includes interview snippets in the people's own voice, along with historical reenactments, court testimony, and even a full-length song.
He starts by pointing out that the focus on "assault weapons" mostly misses the point. For instance, the most recent version of the proposed ban (from the Biden administration, which failed to pass) includes 8 pages of banned weapons, and 60+ pages of equally lethal guns that would still be permissible under the new law. He also provides copious statistics demonstrating that the high-profile mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of gun deaths, and that handguns are far more deadly than rifles. He then goes on to explain why the second amendment was written the way it was, and how most modern interpretations both ignore the history and are made in bad faith.
Where it got really interesting was the discussion on policing and how it explains the vast disparity in gun deaths between the US and other similar countries (eg Germany). Contrary to common misconception, there are actually a lot more police in most Western countries. Which means that the certainty of a criminal being caught is much higher. Conversely, the severity of the punishment is much higher in the US, with longer prison sentences and much harsher conditions. This difference in priorities is reflected in spending, with 80/20 vs 20/80 splits in funding between the police and prisons. And the percentage of solved crimes is also proportionate to the prioritization of preventing and solving crimes rather than punishing the offenders who do get caught.
As a result, he comes out strongly against the "defund the police" movement, arguing that we'd be better off with many more cops on the streets. In this scenario, they'd be more embedded in the community, in positions to quicker to defuse situations before they escalate to violence, rather than the current method of responding after the fact with guns blazing.
He also emphasizes the distinction between premeditated ("instrumental") crime and incidental ("crimes of passion"). The laws and policing are mostly geared towards the first, but the reality is that latter are much more common. He then ties this in to availability of guns being strongly linked to suicide. It turns out that when denied ownership of firearms (especially handguns), more people will seek alternates to suicide, rather than a different method.
The other major interesting observation was that American trauma centers have become really good at treating gunshots, which means that the number of gun deaths is relatively low for the amount of gun violence. And of course the response time and quality of treatment is racially segregated, just like every other aspect of the criminal justice system.
What was largely missing from the discussion was the role of the NRA, or looking at how the two parties agree/differ on the subject. He focuses a lot on inner city gang violence (ie Black people) but doesn't quantitatively compare that to rural white drug-fueled violence. He uses NY state as an example (with the most restrictive gun ownership laws) but doesn't compare low vs high income, North vs South, East Coast vs Western states, etc. It's not that he cherry-picked data to make his points, but rather that he ignored a great many related issues. The book is simply too short, overly relying on compelling anecdotes to paint a detailed picture of a single tree, rather than zooming out to examine the state of the whole [figurative] forest.
An interesting look at gun violence in the US, done in Gladwell's signature style. The audiobook format is perfect, as he narrates it himself and includes interview snippets in the people's own voice, along with historical reenactments, court testimony, and even a full-length song.
He starts by pointing out that the focus on "assault weapons" mostly misses the point. For instance, the most recent version of the proposed ban (from the Biden administration, which failed to pass) includes 8 pages of banned weapons, and 60+ pages of equally lethal guns that would still be permissible under the new law. He also provides copious statistics demonstrating that the high-profile mass shootings account for a tiny fraction of gun deaths, and that handguns are far more deadly than rifles. He then goes on to explain why the second amendment was written the way it was, and how most modern interpretations both ignore the history and are made in bad faith.
Where it got really interesting was the discussion on policing and how it explains the vast disparity in gun deaths between the US and other similar countries (eg Germany). Contrary to common misconception, there are actually a lot more police in most Western countries. Which means that the certainty of a criminal being caught is much higher. Conversely, the severity of the punishment is much higher in the US, with longer prison sentences and much harsher conditions. This difference in priorities is reflected in spending, with 80/20 vs 20/80 splits in funding between the police and prisons. And the percentage of solved crimes is also proportionate to the prioritization of preventing and solving crimes rather than punishing the offenders who do get caught.
As a result, he comes out strongly against the "defund the police" movement, arguing that we'd be better off with many more cops on the streets. In this scenario, they'd be more embedded in the community, in positions to quicker to defuse situations before they escalate to violence, rather than the current method of responding after the fact with guns blazing.
He also emphasizes the distinction between premeditated ("instrumental") crime and incidental ("crimes of passion"). The laws and policing are mostly geared towards the first, but the reality is that latter are much more common. He then ties this in to availability of guns being strongly linked to suicide. It turns out that when denied ownership of firearms (especially handguns), more people will seek alternates to suicide, rather than a different method.
The other major interesting observation was that American trauma centers have become really good at treating gunshots, which means that the number of gun deaths is relatively low for the amount of gun violence. And of course the response time and quality of treatment is racially segregated, just like every other aspect of the criminal justice system.
What was largely missing from the discussion was the role of the NRA, or looking at how the two parties agree/differ on the subject. He focuses a lot on inner city gang violence (ie Black people) but doesn't quantitatively compare that to rural white drug-fueled violence. He uses NY state as an example (with the most restrictive gun ownership laws) but doesn't compare low vs high income, North vs South, East Coast vs Western states, etc. It's not that he cherry-picked data to make his points, but rather that he ignored a great many related issues. The book is simply too short, overly relying on compelling anecdotes to paint a detailed picture of a single tree, rather than zooming out to examine the state of the whole [figurative] forest.
October 9, 2026
I thought the first two chapters were very compelling and rightfully called out both sides of the debate for their faulty logic. Even within those chapters though, he ignores the counter arguments which can also be compelling and keep an already opinionated reader from taking the case seriously. On the "assault weapon ban" he continually refers to an assault rifle as if it is a thing even after he has explained that there is no real definition of it and is really a cosmetic issue. He also doesn't even address what most gun control advocates care about in the assault weapons ban which is the supposed drop in gun homicides. On the 2A side in chapter 2, he lays out the slave patrol argument and ignores the fact that other (free) states were also clamoring for such an amendment before that Virginia convention. He also ignores that Madison didn't even want a bill of rights for the exact reason that by enumerating the rights, the country would argue that those and only those rights were protected as opposed to the initial intent that the government only has those powers defined in the Constitution itself. Using the being clause to claim that he was limiting what rights remain to the people ignores a year of his and Hamilton's efforts to not limit any of the rights at all.
The rest of the book simply fails to deliver any meaningful diagnosis or solution to the debate. Other than a passing "America doesn't have an assault weapons problem, it has a gun problem" he waits until the epilogue to allegorically indicate that he thinks we should ban all guns or at minimum outlaw carrying a gun.
I'm becoming disillusioned by Malcolm's writing. It is written so well and absolutely compelling in the shallow read. But his habit of presenting debated issues as settled history or science and then extrapolating his conclusions to apply them to other situations and completely separate industries often feels like the height of confirmation bias. The deeper I think about his dramatizations, the more I discover the missing logical links.
The rest of the book simply fails to deliver any meaningful diagnosis or solution to the debate. Other than a passing "America doesn't have an assault weapons problem, it has a gun problem" he waits until the epilogue to allegorically indicate that he thinks we should ban all guns or at minimum outlaw carrying a gun.
I'm becoming disillusioned by Malcolm's writing. It is written so well and absolutely compelling in the shallow read. But his habit of presenting debated issues as settled history or science and then extrapolating his conclusions to apply them to other situations and completely separate industries often feels like the height of confirmation bias. The deeper I think about his dramatizations, the more I discover the missing logical links.
October 2, 2026
The American Way of Killing explores America's unusually high level of gun violence through a series of stories, historical examples and social science research. I found it an enjoyable and accessible read, and Gladwell has a knack for making a complicated topic interesting. It actually left me wanting to research the subject further to get a better sense of how robust some of the findings and conclusions are, which I think is a great outcome for a book like this.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on September 29th, 2027.
Gladwell’s latest tackles the highly emotional topic of Violence in America — and he tackles it with a shocking amount of anger and agression aimed at Americans — all 350 million of us. Gladwell’s general approach to his subjects is to (in his words) find interesting anecdotes and interesting research and pair them up. The set of vignettes in this collection do this but in a hostile and often misleading way. Hostile in that he’s clearly angry at Americans (again — all of us) literally and repeatedly calling us stupid, dishonest, “morally reckless,” and pedantic at various points in the narratives. Misleading in that none of his “stories” are comprehensive — some offer partial (but never tested at scale) solutions, many describe efforts and explain why they are a waste of time, a few contradict each other, and several leave out critical aspects of the data that could change the conclusions. I am glad I read this book and I did learn some new and relevant information, but I strongly recommend reading the book critically and doing your own supplemental research to get a fuller picture.
The bits I found interesting: Americans (according to Gladwell) think they are over policed, but in fact we are largely under-policed. A comparison of police forces in L.A. and Berlin (equal populations with L.A. a larger physical area) surprised me. 8,500 police in L.A. vs 18,000 in Berlin. This section included a good description of how a larger police force could prevent more crime and improve community engagement based on interviews with those who had run large police forces (e.g. Boston, L.A.). A dive into a program to teach young men (the victims and perpetrators of the largest segment of gun violence) how to maintain emotional control based on the “realization” that much of gun violence was based on “an exaggerated sense of moral injury leading them to take the law into their on hands.” A few dips into how gun fatality statistics are influenced on the one hand by the amazing abilities of surgeons to save victims who would have died in the past, and on the other hand by the location of trauma centers which are often not close enough to the areas that need them the most. While not productive in any sense, I did learn something from the details of the assault weapons ban — pages and pages of specific weapons banned, an even longer list of those not banned, followed by his point that most homicides were committed with handguns anyway.
The pointless or frustrating bits: Long diatribes about our “absurd” focus on the second amendment and the pedantic nature of the Supreme Court, betraying incomprehension for what the Constitution is and how the Supreme Court is supposed to make decisions (Gladwell is a British-Canadian who has lived in the U.S. since the mid eighties without applying for citizenship so maybe he missed the memo?). Conflating homicides and suicides into single gun violence statistics which give misleading ideas about where the biggest problems are. Some sideways mentions of racism without any cohesive theme — almost as though just throwing it in there.
I’ve read most, if not all, of Gladwell’s books and have enjoyed them. They are called “pop sociology” and I enjoy the surprising tidbits. However, with such a critical topic under discussion, the light-weight nature of the anecdotes coupled with the needlessly hostile tone really didn’t work for me. Read it — but spend some time thinking about what you read and maybe do a little extra research before drawing any conclusions.
There are so many good sources of relevant information out there. Here are a few statistics that I found (and found easily): There is an oft referenced meme on gun friendly states having the highest amount of gun deaths. Using the CDC data at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/..., what I found is that by removing the suicides and only looking at homicides, many of the “red” states known to be very gun friendly (Montana, Wyoming, Alaska) jumped down to the middle of the list because almost all (80-90%) of their gun deaths were suicides. In fact, California (very blue!) and Montana (pretty red!) have the exact same number of homicide gun deaths per capita. I also looked up what percentage of firearms in the U.S. were used to cause injury or fatality — according to https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-f..., this is 0.003% of all firearms. Lastly, I asked one of the AI engines to give me information on guns used in self-defense and it gave me pointers to several different surveys run by a variety of organizations resulting in a large range (70,000 - 2,500,000) of reported self-defense events, mostly guns used as a deterrant, i.e. without firing a shot. For me this helps to frame why so many people want guns and how few (and concentrated) the use of guns for violence is.
I should mention that I am by no means a “gun nut,” and I’m extremely worried about the level of overall violence in our country — not just inner city gun homicides, but the tendency towards violence with any kind of weapon, the acceptance of politically motivated violence, the excusing of violence committed by the mentally ill, and the violence committed by people who just seem to enjoy it. Some level of gun control is of course required, but it is in no way sufficient. We have a big problem with people and culture — some of Gladwell’s stories point in the right direction, but not nearly enough.
Gladwell’s latest tackles the highly emotional topic of Violence in America — and he tackles it with a shocking amount of anger and agression aimed at Americans — all 350 million of us. Gladwell’s general approach to his subjects is to (in his words) find interesting anecdotes and interesting research and pair them up. The set of vignettes in this collection do this but in a hostile and often misleading way. Hostile in that he’s clearly angry at Americans (again — all of us) literally and repeatedly calling us stupid, dishonest, “morally reckless,” and pedantic at various points in the narratives. Misleading in that none of his “stories” are comprehensive — some offer partial (but never tested at scale) solutions, many describe efforts and explain why they are a waste of time, a few contradict each other, and several leave out critical aspects of the data that could change the conclusions. I am glad I read this book and I did learn some new and relevant information, but I strongly recommend reading the book critically and doing your own supplemental research to get a fuller picture.
The bits I found interesting: Americans (according to Gladwell) think they are over policed, but in fact we are largely under-policed. A comparison of police forces in L.A. and Berlin (equal populations with L.A. a larger physical area) surprised me. 8,500 police in L.A. vs 18,000 in Berlin. This section included a good description of how a larger police force could prevent more crime and improve community engagement based on interviews with those who had run large police forces (e.g. Boston, L.A.). A dive into a program to teach young men (the victims and perpetrators of the largest segment of gun violence) how to maintain emotional control based on the “realization” that much of gun violence was based on “an exaggerated sense of moral injury leading them to take the law into their on hands.” A few dips into how gun fatality statistics are influenced on the one hand by the amazing abilities of surgeons to save victims who would have died in the past, and on the other hand by the location of trauma centers which are often not close enough to the areas that need them the most. While not productive in any sense, I did learn something from the details of the assault weapons ban — pages and pages of specific weapons banned, an even longer list of those not banned, followed by his point that most homicides were committed with handguns anyway.
The pointless or frustrating bits: Long diatribes about our “absurd” focus on the second amendment and the pedantic nature of the Supreme Court, betraying incomprehension for what the Constitution is and how the Supreme Court is supposed to make decisions (Gladwell is a British-Canadian who has lived in the U.S. since the mid eighties without applying for citizenship so maybe he missed the memo?). Conflating homicides and suicides into single gun violence statistics which give misleading ideas about where the biggest problems are. Some sideways mentions of racism without any cohesive theme — almost as though just throwing it in there.
I’ve read most, if not all, of Gladwell’s books and have enjoyed them. They are called “pop sociology” and I enjoy the surprising tidbits. However, with such a critical topic under discussion, the light-weight nature of the anecdotes coupled with the needlessly hostile tone really didn’t work for me. Read it — but spend some time thinking about what you read and maybe do a little extra research before drawing any conclusions.
There are so many good sources of relevant information out there. Here are a few statistics that I found (and found easily): There is an oft referenced meme on gun friendly states having the highest amount of gun deaths. Using the CDC data at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/state-stats/..., what I found is that by removing the suicides and only looking at homicides, many of the “red” states known to be very gun friendly (Montana, Wyoming, Alaska) jumped down to the middle of the list because almost all (80-90%) of their gun deaths were suicides. In fact, California (very blue!) and Montana (pretty red!) have the exact same number of homicide gun deaths per capita. I also looked up what percentage of firearms in the U.S. were used to cause injury or fatality — according to https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-f..., this is 0.003% of all firearms. Lastly, I asked one of the AI engines to give me information on guns used in self-defense and it gave me pointers to several different surveys run by a variety of organizations resulting in a large range (70,000 - 2,500,000) of reported self-defense events, mostly guns used as a deterrant, i.e. without firing a shot. For me this helps to frame why so many people want guns and how few (and concentrated) the use of guns for violence is.
I should mention that I am by no means a “gun nut,” and I’m extremely worried about the level of overall violence in our country — not just inner city gun homicides, but the tendency towards violence with any kind of weapon, the acceptance of politically motivated violence, the excusing of violence committed by the mentally ill, and the violence committed by people who just seem to enjoy it. Some level of gun control is of course required, but it is in no way sufficient. We have a big problem with people and culture — some of Gladwell’s stories point in the right direction, but not nearly enough.
October 24, 2026
In The American Way of Killing, Gladwell examines the epidemic of gun violence in America, teasing out its historical origins and exposing the dishonest conversations, pointless quibbles, and enduring racism that help perpetuate it. Over the course of the book, he digs into the motivations behind most shootings, the confusing wording of the second amendment, the useless distraction of arguing over which kinds of guns to ban, and the surprising fact that American cities are generally under-policed compared to comparable European cities.
For me this was Gladwell's most compelling book in recent memory. As always, I was impressed with his research and the insights he draws from it. He is such a fascinating and balanced thinker, and I enjoy his way of laying groundwork and building to surprising conclusions.
For me this was Gladwell's most compelling book in recent memory. As always, I was impressed with his research and the insights he draws from it. He is such a fascinating and balanced thinker, and I enjoy his way of laying groundwork and building to surprising conclusions.
October 23, 2026
Everyone should listen to this. The audiobook is very podcast-like with music, interviews, and clips. Incredibly informative and eye-opening. I’m going to be thinking about this one for many weeks to come
October 18, 2026
I found this insightful and educational.
October 2, 2026
Leave it to Malcolm Gladwell to connect all the dots and focus the discussion of complex tragedies into the convicting, actionable reality of their common denominator. This book would save lives if the American public was truly interested in listening. I highly recommend the audiobook.
October 1, 2026
Two numbers from Memphis. In 1935 the city recorded roughly forty homicides per hundred thousand people; by 1985 that figure had halved. Anyone reading the local paper would have concluded Memphis had become safer. Over the same fifty years the rate of serious assaults there nearly doubled. More people were being attacked, and fewer of them were dying. The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell builds its most interesting chapter on that gap, and the explanation it offers is not that Memphis calmed down. It is that Memphis got better doctors, and everyone else took the credit.
What The American Way of Killing Is Actually Arguing
The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell opens with an emergency physician on the South Side of Chicago who has buried fifteen close friends and an older brother, all shot, and who went back to practise medicine in the neighbourhood he grew up in.
From there the argument runs through eight chapters in three parts, and it is more disciplined than Gladwell's reputation suggests. Americans think they have a crime problem; the opening pages show that robbery rates in Paris and London comfortably exceed Chicago's, and that crime and lethal violence are separate phenomena with separate causes. Americans think most murders are planned; four centuries of records say homicide is mostly an argument that escalates. Americans think they are heavily policed; Berlin, the same size as Los Angeles, has roughly twice as many officers.
The Chapter That Justifies the Book
The third chapter is the one to read, and it is the most genuinely new idea here. Modern American trauma care is extraordinarily good, for a reason nobody wants to say aloud: American surgeons get more practice with bullet wounds than anyone else on earth. Gladwell gets one Baltimore veteran to walk him through the most remarkable case of a thirty-five-year career, and to estimate that he has personally worked on something like three and a half thousand gunshot patients.
Then comes the turn. If wounds that killed people in 1970 are survivable in 2026, the homicide rate can fall while the violence underneath it rises, and a country can congratulate itself on progress its paramedics manufactured. The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell names the effect after that Baltimore surgeon and reaches for the economics of moral hazard: a few people absorb the consequences of everyone else's failure, so nobody else has to act. It is supported rather than asserted, including an estimate that medical improvements alone cut the death rate from wounds by up to four per cent a year.
He sharpens it twice. Nobody in the federal government counts how many Americans are shot and survive; a criminologist needed a Justice Department grant to hand-count four years of cases in four cities, and found three non-fatal shootings for every fatal one. And the neighbourhoods furthest from a Chicago trauma centre are overwhelmingly Black, so the same wound is likelier to be recorded as a murder depending on where the victim was standing.
Killing, Malcolm Gladwell, and the Trouble With the Rifle Chapter
Chapter one is the problem. Gladwell goes to a range in North Carolina with a law professor and competitive shooter, learns to hit a target, and then takes apart what an assault-weapon ban prohibits: pistol grips, forward grips, folding stocks, barrel shrouds, threaded barrels, mounts for grenades nobody may legally own. The 2025 Senate bill names the banned rifles across seven pages, then lists the functionally identical rifles that stay legal across ninety-six. That is fair and damaging, and his statistical point stands: handguns are used in the large majority of mass shootings and in most American gun deaths.
Where The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell overreaches is the leap from "these bans are cosmetic" to "the rifle is not the problem." The lethality claim rests on one study of 232 autopsy reports, and magazine capacity, which is the substantive part of the argument, gets handled in a footnote leaning partly on a criminologist whose gun research is heavily contested. A reader who knows the field will notice that the weakest chapter comes first, and will read the rest more warily than it deserves.
Where The American Way of Killing Gives Ground
Four things hold The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell back.
Contested scholarship arrives as settled. The argument that the militia clause was a concession to Southern slave patrols rests on one law professor's thesis and one linguist's corpus analysis. Both are real work; both are minority positions. No serious originalist reply appears.
He wants twice as many police and barely argues with the objection. The case that America is under-policed is his best-evidenced, and it includes the finding that the fewer officers a country has the more violent they tend to be. But the question of how you double a force that much of the public distrusts gets a few pages and a shrug.
The elephant never gets assembled. He promises in the introduction that the separate parts will add up to a whole and that the problem is not intractable. The book ends on a parable. There is no chapter that says what to do, in what order, at what cost.
The machinery is visible. Every finding gets a coined name, a parable and a reversal. When the evidence is strong this is thrilling; when it is thinner, the shape of the argument does the persuading.
Read It If, Skip It If
The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell is for a particular reader.
Read it if:
You want reporting rather than polemic: a gun-rights professor, trauma surgeons and a police chief all talk at length.
The idea that a falling murder rate can conceal rising violence is new to you.
You like being told that what everybody agrees on is wrong, and shown the data.
Skip it if:
You want a policy programme at the end.
Clinical description of gunshot injuries is something you would rather not read.
You have no patience for the house style, which is very much intact.
Content Notes
Sustained clinical description of what bullets do to organs. Children taught to treat wounds; an entire class who have each lost a relative to shooting. Individual killings recounted, including intimate-partner homicide. Gun suicide figures and a discussion of access to means. Slavery, a slave rebellion and its suppression, and slave patrols. Racism in ambulance dispatch. Mass shootings described, including Uvalde and Aurora. Police violence. Prison conditions.
The Verdict
The Second Amendment chapter sends him back to the Stono Rebellion of 1739, when a group of enslaved men on the South Carolina coast killed their way up a road for a day before an armed church congregation stopped them. The men who rode out that Sunday were a slave patrol, drawn from the militia. That, he argues, is the anxiety Madison was answering in Richmond fifty years later, and the sentence the Supreme Court has since read as though its first half were throat-clearing.
Whether or not that chapter convinces you, the closing pages will. The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell ends in Dodge City, where tourists pay to watch actors shoot each other, and where the real town in the 1870s put up a sign at the bridge prohibiting firearms, ran a gun check like a coat check, and hired six officers for two thousand residents. Homicides fell to fewer than two a year. The most famously lawless town in the American imagination looked at its problem and fixed it in about eighteen months. That is a better ending than a policy chapter, and a more damning one.
What The American Way of Killing Is Actually Arguing
The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell opens with an emergency physician on the South Side of Chicago who has buried fifteen close friends and an older brother, all shot, and who went back to practise medicine in the neighbourhood he grew up in.
From there the argument runs through eight chapters in three parts, and it is more disciplined than Gladwell's reputation suggests. Americans think they have a crime problem; the opening pages show that robbery rates in Paris and London comfortably exceed Chicago's, and that crime and lethal violence are separate phenomena with separate causes. Americans think most murders are planned; four centuries of records say homicide is mostly an argument that escalates. Americans think they are heavily policed; Berlin, the same size as Los Angeles, has roughly twice as many officers.
The Chapter That Justifies the Book
The third chapter is the one to read, and it is the most genuinely new idea here. Modern American trauma care is extraordinarily good, for a reason nobody wants to say aloud: American surgeons get more practice with bullet wounds than anyone else on earth. Gladwell gets one Baltimore veteran to walk him through the most remarkable case of a thirty-five-year career, and to estimate that he has personally worked on something like three and a half thousand gunshot patients.
Then comes the turn. If wounds that killed people in 1970 are survivable in 2026, the homicide rate can fall while the violence underneath it rises, and a country can congratulate itself on progress its paramedics manufactured. The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell names the effect after that Baltimore surgeon and reaches for the economics of moral hazard: a few people absorb the consequences of everyone else's failure, so nobody else has to act. It is supported rather than asserted, including an estimate that medical improvements alone cut the death rate from wounds by up to four per cent a year.
He sharpens it twice. Nobody in the federal government counts how many Americans are shot and survive; a criminologist needed a Justice Department grant to hand-count four years of cases in four cities, and found three non-fatal shootings for every fatal one. And the neighbourhoods furthest from a Chicago trauma centre are overwhelmingly Black, so the same wound is likelier to be recorded as a murder depending on where the victim was standing.
Killing, Malcolm Gladwell, and the Trouble With the Rifle Chapter
Chapter one is the problem. Gladwell goes to a range in North Carolina with a law professor and competitive shooter, learns to hit a target, and then takes apart what an assault-weapon ban prohibits: pistol grips, forward grips, folding stocks, barrel shrouds, threaded barrels, mounts for grenades nobody may legally own. The 2025 Senate bill names the banned rifles across seven pages, then lists the functionally identical rifles that stay legal across ninety-six. That is fair and damaging, and his statistical point stands: handguns are used in the large majority of mass shootings and in most American gun deaths.
Where The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell overreaches is the leap from "these bans are cosmetic" to "the rifle is not the problem." The lethality claim rests on one study of 232 autopsy reports, and magazine capacity, which is the substantive part of the argument, gets handled in a footnote leaning partly on a criminologist whose gun research is heavily contested. A reader who knows the field will notice that the weakest chapter comes first, and will read the rest more warily than it deserves.
Where The American Way of Killing Gives Ground
Four things hold The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell back.
Contested scholarship arrives as settled. The argument that the militia clause was a concession to Southern slave patrols rests on one law professor's thesis and one linguist's corpus analysis. Both are real work; both are minority positions. No serious originalist reply appears.
He wants twice as many police and barely argues with the objection. The case that America is under-policed is his best-evidenced, and it includes the finding that the fewer officers a country has the more violent they tend to be. But the question of how you double a force that much of the public distrusts gets a few pages and a shrug.
The elephant never gets assembled. He promises in the introduction that the separate parts will add up to a whole and that the problem is not intractable. The book ends on a parable. There is no chapter that says what to do, in what order, at what cost.
The machinery is visible. Every finding gets a coined name, a parable and a reversal. When the evidence is strong this is thrilling; when it is thinner, the shape of the argument does the persuading.
Read It If, Skip It If
The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell is for a particular reader.
Read it if:
You want reporting rather than polemic: a gun-rights professor, trauma surgeons and a police chief all talk at length.
The idea that a falling murder rate can conceal rising violence is new to you.
You like being told that what everybody agrees on is wrong, and shown the data.
Skip it if:
You want a policy programme at the end.
Clinical description of gunshot injuries is something you would rather not read.
You have no patience for the house style, which is very much intact.
Content Notes
Sustained clinical description of what bullets do to organs. Children taught to treat wounds; an entire class who have each lost a relative to shooting. Individual killings recounted, including intimate-partner homicide. Gun suicide figures and a discussion of access to means. Slavery, a slave rebellion and its suppression, and slave patrols. Racism in ambulance dispatch. Mass shootings described, including Uvalde and Aurora. Police violence. Prison conditions.
The Verdict
The Second Amendment chapter sends him back to the Stono Rebellion of 1739, when a group of enslaved men on the South Carolina coast killed their way up a road for a day before an armed church congregation stopped them. The men who rode out that Sunday were a slave patrol, drawn from the militia. That, he argues, is the anxiety Madison was answering in Richmond fifty years later, and the sentence the Supreme Court has since read as though its first half were throat-clearing.
Whether or not that chapter convinces you, the closing pages will. The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell ends in Dodge City, where tourists pay to watch actors shoot each other, and where the real town in the 1870s put up a sign at the bridge prohibiting firearms, ran a gun check like a coat check, and hired six officers for two thousand residents. Homicides fell to fewer than two a year. The most famously lawless town in the American imagination looked at its problem and fixed it in about eighteen months. That is a better ending than a policy chapter, and a more damning one.
October 31, 2026
“[Americans] think their Constitution enshrines a basic right to own guns. It doesn’t. The founding fathers were just trying to cut a deal with slave owners.”
Malcolm Gladwell is a brilliant journalist, analyst, and author. And, frankly, he summarizes his own writing far more succinctly and more compellingly than I, as a lowly reviewer, could ever hope to manage. In his introduction, he lets us know what we are about to read:
“The book is divided into three parts. Part One is about the fundamentally dishonest way Americans talk about their gun violence. Part Two is about how Americans misdiagnose the nature of the violence that plagues their streets. Part Three is about the moral recklessness of the course the country has chosen.”
Fairly lofty goals and certainly no punches pulled there. But, my God, does he deliver everything he promised and a good deal more besides. In the final chapter, Gladwell offers the poignant summary:
“THE AMERICAN WAY OF KILLING is the story of a country that has lost its way. The United States is a place of extraordinary wealth. Its scientists and entrepreneurs and intellectuals are the envy of the world. Yet it suffers from a level of lethal violence that would be unthinkable among any of its peers in the developed world.”
Mr Gladwell’s analysis, his astute journalism, and his gripping anecdotal storytelling definitely modified some of the details of my opinions concerning US gun violence – the history of the 2nd Amendment; assault rifles and handguns; the nature of policing; racism; mass shootings and murder statistics; the subjective differences between types of gun violence and gun homicides; the shocking relationship between health care and per capita homicide rates; and much, much more.
But what does the future of guns, gun violence, and homicide in the USA look like? Gladwell’s opinion, “And not only do Americans get things wrong, but they seem uninterested in ever getting things right.” Yep, and my interpretation of that rather blunt opinion is that the only hope that the USA might ever achieve the elusive target of getting things right is if they find the strength, the wisdom, and the courage to acknowledge that they’ve been wrong for more than two centuries and that the fundamental construction of their society is a paradigm that needs to be broken down and completely re-written.
It's an interesting coincidence to observe that my finishing reading this book and posting this review is three days before the 2026 US mid-term elections. The results of that election, in my opinion at least, will serve notice to the world as to whether US citizens are remotely interested in looking in the general direction of re-writing that paradigm! Stay tuned.
Paul Weiss
Malcolm Gladwell is a brilliant journalist, analyst, and author. And, frankly, he summarizes his own writing far more succinctly and more compellingly than I, as a lowly reviewer, could ever hope to manage. In his introduction, he lets us know what we are about to read:
“The book is divided into three parts. Part One is about the fundamentally dishonest way Americans talk about their gun violence. Part Two is about how Americans misdiagnose the nature of the violence that plagues their streets. Part Three is about the moral recklessness of the course the country has chosen.”
Fairly lofty goals and certainly no punches pulled there. But, my God, does he deliver everything he promised and a good deal more besides. In the final chapter, Gladwell offers the poignant summary:
“THE AMERICAN WAY OF KILLING is the story of a country that has lost its way. The United States is a place of extraordinary wealth. Its scientists and entrepreneurs and intellectuals are the envy of the world. Yet it suffers from a level of lethal violence that would be unthinkable among any of its peers in the developed world.”
Mr Gladwell’s analysis, his astute journalism, and his gripping anecdotal storytelling definitely modified some of the details of my opinions concerning US gun violence – the history of the 2nd Amendment; assault rifles and handguns; the nature of policing; racism; mass shootings and murder statistics; the subjective differences between types of gun violence and gun homicides; the shocking relationship between health care and per capita homicide rates; and much, much more.
But what does the future of guns, gun violence, and homicide in the USA look like? Gladwell’s opinion, “And not only do Americans get things wrong, but they seem uninterested in ever getting things right.” Yep, and my interpretation of that rather blunt opinion is that the only hope that the USA might ever achieve the elusive target of getting things right is if they find the strength, the wisdom, and the courage to acknowledge that they’ve been wrong for more than two centuries and that the fundamental construction of their society is a paradigm that needs to be broken down and completely re-written.
It's an interesting coincidence to observe that my finishing reading this book and posting this review is three days before the 2026 US mid-term elections. The results of that election, in my opinion at least, will serve notice to the world as to whether US citizens are remotely interested in looking in the general direction of re-writing that paradigm! Stay tuned.
Paul Weiss
October 31, 2026
Went in thinking that this might just be a "preach it, Malcolm!" read, as I am a happy member of the Malcolm choir. I was ready for my biases to be confirmed. And for many of his core themes, yes, that was the case. But Gladwell is just so talented at approaching questions from unique, piercing angles that I still learned new things from those arguments. And then there were the classic Gladwell surprises. Like, hello, I should have expected this. I hope that others approach this read with greater curiosity than I did, and that, like me, they learn some new insights:
1. James Madison was cutting a deal with slave owners when writing the Second Amendment?! Wild, unsurprising, and awful. It is about giving militias the right to bear arms (against slave revolts). Obviously, I wish he wasn't compelled to make this deal and that he would have phrased it differently. I also wish the SCOTUS would, idk, listen to grammar experts. My mind is blown.
2. Countries that have less crime and less violence have MORE police. I admit, I was surprised, but it makes so much sense. More boots on the ground to de-escalate altercations before they get violent, and to create community and trust. Wow. It is cool when data (and compelling storytelling) changes your mind about something. (I would be curious to know what these countries also do to address systemic biases cuz America's problems would not simply disappear if our police-to-citizen ratio matched European countries).
3. Crime vs Violence. America has a violence problem more so than it has a crime problem. Crime/violence stats are currently measured with a focus on casualties, but since American doctors have had so much practice with gunshot wounds that they continually improve patients' chances of survival (a wonderful thing), these stats do not accurately reflect the increase in the measure of violence.
4. Most violence results from folks who don't know how to regulate their emotions and have lethal weapons on hand. This section dovetails wonderfully with his work in The Tipping Point.
Gun deaths in America are absolutely absurd, tragic, and preventable.
What a fascinating and infuriating read. Very short (essentially a long podcast, and if you listen to the audio, he has his various interviews integrated). My only note is that I noticed Gladwell switched up when he was in the out-group versus the in-group (us vs. them). He's a British-Canadian who has lived in the US for decades, so I'm sure each use case was valid and appropriate (and deliberately persuasive), but I occasionally found it distracting. Could very well be a me problem.
4.5
1. James Madison was cutting a deal with slave owners when writing the Second Amendment?! Wild, unsurprising, and awful. It is about giving militias the right to bear arms (against slave revolts). Obviously, I wish he wasn't compelled to make this deal and that he would have phrased it differently. I also wish the SCOTUS would, idk, listen to grammar experts. My mind is blown.
2. Countries that have less crime and less violence have MORE police. I admit, I was surprised, but it makes so much sense. More boots on the ground to de-escalate altercations before they get violent, and to create community and trust. Wow. It is cool when data (and compelling storytelling) changes your mind about something. (I would be curious to know what these countries also do to address systemic biases cuz America's problems would not simply disappear if our police-to-citizen ratio matched European countries).
3. Crime vs Violence. America has a violence problem more so than it has a crime problem. Crime/violence stats are currently measured with a focus on casualties, but since American doctors have had so much practice with gunshot wounds that they continually improve patients' chances of survival (a wonderful thing), these stats do not accurately reflect the increase in the measure of violence.
4. Most violence results from folks who don't know how to regulate their emotions and have lethal weapons on hand. This section dovetails wonderfully with his work in The Tipping Point.
Gun deaths in America are absolutely absurd, tragic, and preventable.
What a fascinating and infuriating read. Very short (essentially a long podcast, and if you listen to the audio, he has his various interviews integrated). My only note is that I noticed Gladwell switched up when he was in the out-group versus the in-group (us vs. them). He's a British-Canadian who has lived in the US for decades, so I'm sure each use case was valid and appropriate (and deliberately persuasive), but I occasionally found it distracting. Could very well be a me problem.
4.5
October 29, 2026
A fascinating book examining why the wealthiest country in the world has homicides and murders typically on par with the poorest. Unlike his previous books, Gladwell doesn’t posit a point to prove. Instead he gives scenarios and observations about America’s relationship to gun violence - most thought provoking!
The chapters explore reasons for or results of gun violence. One of the interesting ones shows how impulsive eruptions of anger to violence and often result death. And then because our emergency rooms have handled so many gun violence patients, medical improvements have saved lives. The last chapter on Dodge City addresses that back in its origins the city prohibited carrying guns - something that’s forgotten, even though the early TV western show, Gunsmoke, showed this. The conundrum that arises is that while we Americans think of school shootings, gang violence or police shootings when associating guns with violence, more people are killed by someone they know than someone they don’t which makes the allowance for all Americans to carry guns misguided and all due to an incompetent Supreme Court decision.
Some time is spent on court decisions, particularly the awful Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment in 2008 came about - all because of Madison’s writing based on 18th C writing not being understood in the 21st C! No research was done on the tortured syntax that when it was done shows clearly the intent of that amendment was on having an available militia not on individual gun owners. This was because Madison came from a slave holding family and there had been a terrible slave uprising that made all slave holders.
I listened to this book nicely narrated by the author and which included actual recordings of the quotes in the book. Even the song around which the book has thematic shape concludes the book.
Lots of food for thought in the book. No clear conclusion except gun violence is now so finely woven into our fabric it can probably never leave but may be diminished through saner legislation like Mexico’s law on gun possession- the only other country in the world besides the US that has such a law.
The chapters explore reasons for or results of gun violence. One of the interesting ones shows how impulsive eruptions of anger to violence and often result death. And then because our emergency rooms have handled so many gun violence patients, medical improvements have saved lives. The last chapter on Dodge City addresses that back in its origins the city prohibited carrying guns - something that’s forgotten, even though the early TV western show, Gunsmoke, showed this. The conundrum that arises is that while we Americans think of school shootings, gang violence or police shootings when associating guns with violence, more people are killed by someone they know than someone they don’t which makes the allowance for all Americans to carry guns misguided and all due to an incompetent Supreme Court decision.
Some time is spent on court decisions, particularly the awful Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment in 2008 came about - all because of Madison’s writing based on 18th C writing not being understood in the 21st C! No research was done on the tortured syntax that when it was done shows clearly the intent of that amendment was on having an available militia not on individual gun owners. This was because Madison came from a slave holding family and there had been a terrible slave uprising that made all slave holders.
I listened to this book nicely narrated by the author and which included actual recordings of the quotes in the book. Even the song around which the book has thematic shape concludes the book.
Lots of food for thought in the book. No clear conclusion except gun violence is now so finely woven into our fabric it can probably never leave but may be diminished through saner legislation like Mexico’s law on gun possession- the only other country in the world besides the US that has such a law.
October 5, 2026
Very important read. It’s easy to understand, logical, well cited and written. As the new Supreme court term begins, I have a new perspective on the upcoming case regarding AR 15s. What pedantry will we be subjected to this time :))
The audiobook is an immersive podcast experience as if listening to a docuseries from Revisionist history.
It loses its way on some arguments perhaps like the Cornwell effect but it found its way back.
The song “Troubles”, performed by Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors, is weaved into the audiobook and is absolutely beautiful. I had tears when I heard the song at the end of the book.
The audiobook is an immersive podcast experience as if listening to a docuseries from Revisionist history.
It loses its way on some arguments perhaps like the Cornwell effect but it found its way back.
The song “Troubles”, performed by Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors, is weaved into the audiobook and is absolutely beautiful. I had tears when I heard the song at the end of the book.
October 23, 2026
I found many parts extremely interesting and some completely not relevant. The first half about the number of police in the U.S. vs. European countries was very interesting. I also learned that most mass shootings are done using pistols and not assault rifles like the media makes it seem. Another thought provoking point was that doctors in the U.S. are so trained to handle gun wounds that it's not even a second thought that they have to compared to European doctors having almost no experience treating gun shot wounds. The second half lost me and didn't connect well to the first half.
October 4, 2026
To be fair, I liked this better than Strangers. Gladwell is very approachable; as he states in his acknowledgments, this is borne from his podcast and the audiobook feels like a podcast. I feel the stories he tells and people he interviews are interesting. I don’t agree with everything he argues. He still loves a pithy phrase to answer large, convoluted, complex problems. Honestly, I wonder if he considers himself an American after living here in adulthood. Ultimately, I still think he shields himself in the pop science/sociology way by using these pithy ideas while ignoring a lot of history, context, and culture.
October 14, 2026
I think I’ve probably read a magazine article or two by Malcolm Gladwell but never one of his books. This was some crazy stuff—but interesting. There’s a discussion of 18th century grammar (to explain a faulty reading of the 2nd amendment by the Supreme Court). I was a little uncomfortable sometimes at the Canadian author’s relentless criticism of Americans but hey, I guess we deserve it. Elbows up!
October 25, 2026
Succinct, persuasive, interesting, and engaging. Too bad Malcom is Canadian because I want him to run for President. Also wish I could go back in time and have James Madison rephrase the second amendment!!
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