Latest Stories
Acclaimed journalist, author and public speaker Malcolm Gladwell will discuss his latest book, The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic, on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at Vanderbilt University. Gladwell will be in conversation with award-winning podcast and public radio show host Lee C. Camp beginning at 6:30 p.m. in Langford Auditorium, 2209 Garland Ave. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m.
The event is hosted by the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries and Dialogue Vanderbilt in collaboration with Parnassus Books.
Tickets for the talk are $38.00 each (plus Eventbrite fees) and include one general admission seat and a pre-signed copy of The American Way of Killing, to be published by Little, Brown and Co. on Sept. 29. There will be no signing line for book personalizations or an author photo line at this event.
About the book
Gladwell returns with his most urgent book yet: 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 The American Way of Killing, 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 nations.
Drawing on original interviews, archival and social science research, and his trademark insight, Gladwell approaches this 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 17th-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?
With 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 a result, does not understand how to fix it.
About the author
Gladwell is the author of eight New York Times bestsellers: The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath, Talking to Strangers, The Bomber Mafia, and Revenge of the Tipping Point. He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries, an audio content company that produces his podcast, Revisionist History, among other podcasts and audiobooks. He was born in England, raised in Canada, and lives outside New York with his family and a cat named Biggie Smalls.
About the moderator
Camp is the host of the award-winning podcast and nationally syndicated public radio show No Small Endeavor, distributed by PRX. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. Following seminary (M.Div., Abilene Christian University), he completed a graduate degree in moral theology (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame). Camp is an Alabamian by birth, married to Laura, with whom he shares three adult sons, and has made Nashville home for more than 25 years.