Overview

A searing reflection on the broken promise of safety in America Dr. Jonathan M. Metzl, long at the forefront of a movement advocating for gun reform as a matter of public health, has been on constant media call in the aftermath of fatal shootings. But the 2018 Nashville killings led him on a path toward recognizing the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the impassioned complexities of American gun politics. As he came to understand it, public health is a harder sell in a nation that fundamentally disagrees about what it means to be safe, healthy, or free. In this book, Metzl reckons both with the long history of distrust of public health and the larger forces--social, ideological, historical, racial, and political--that allow mass shootings to occur on a near daily basis in America. Looking closely at the cycle in which mass shootings lead to shock, horror, calls for action, and, ultimately, political gridlock, he explores what happens to the soul of a nation--and the meanings of safety and community--when we normalize violence as an acceptable trade-off for freedom. This brilliant, piercing analysis points to mass shootings as a symptom of our most unresolved national conflicts. What We've Become ultimately sets us on the path of alliance forging, racial reckoning, and political power brokering we must take to put things right.

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"""Metzl's argument is consistently persuasive and, unfortunately, both timely and probably timeless, given the reluctance of those in power to do anything to halt the bloodshed."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"""

Author Information

Jonathan M. Metzl is the author of several books, including Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He is the Frederick B. Rentschler II professor of sociology and psychiatry and the director of the Department of Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University. After thirty-two years serving in the Intelligence Community using his voice for different purposes, Bob Johnson decided to continue that passion narrating audiobooks, still bringing stories to life and as different characters. While he still enjoys a good spy thriller, he is equally thrilled to narrate mysteries, true crime, romance and, of course, nonfiction. When he's not in his home studio in Reston, Virginia, you can normally find Bob either behind the mic announcing Maryland sports or in the stands cheering on the Terps.

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