The American Way of Killing: An Investigation of America’s Gun Violence Epidemic

The American Way of Killing: An Investigation of America’s Gun Violence Epidemic

Author: Pushkin Industries September 29, 2026 Duration: 14:49

The United States has far more homicides than any of its peers around the world. Why? 

In his new audiobook book, The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic, 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. 

Here's a preview. Get the full audiobook at pushkin.fm/audiobooks or wherever you get audiobooks.

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