From a Taller Tower : The Rise of the American Mass Shooter / Seamus McGraw.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McGraw, Seamus, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mass shootings--United States.

Mass shootings.

Massacres--United States.

Massacres.

School shootings--United States.

School shootings.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (139 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, [2021]

Summary:

We, as a nation, have become desensitized to the shock and pain in the wake of mass shootings. In the bottomless silence between gunshots, as political stalemate ensures inaction, the killing continues; the dying continues. From a Taller Tower attends to the silence that has left us empty in the aftermath of these atrocities. Veteran journalist Seamus McGraw chronicles the rise of the mass shooter to dismantle the myths we have constructed around the murderers and ourselves. In 1966, America’s first mass shooter, from atop the University of Texas tower, unleashed a new reality: the fear that any of us may be targeted by a killer, and the complicity we bear in granting these murderers the fame or infamy they crave. Addressing individual cases in the epidemic that began in Austin, From a Taller Tower bluntly confronts our obsession with the shooters—and explores the isolation, narcissism, and sense of victimhood that fan their obsessions. Drawing on the experiences of survivors and first responders as well as the knowledge of mental health experts, McGraw challenges the notion of the “good guy with a gun,” the idolization of guns (including his own), and the reliability of traumatized memory. Yet in this terrible history, McGraw reminds us of the humanity that can stop the killing and the dying.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue. The Deepest Silence There Is

Chapter 1 The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy

Chapter 2 Deliver Us from Evil

Chapter 3 To Kill the Last Killer

Chapter 4 “’Tis Not Alone My Inky Cloak ”

Chapter 5 Jokers Wild

Chapter 6 If You See Something, Say Something

Chapter 7 A Good Guy with a Gun

Chapter 8 I Cling to My Gun, You Cling to Yours

Chapter 9 The Fog of War in Peacetime

Chapter 10 From a Taller Tower

Epilogue. The Silence between Gunshots

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: McGraw, Seamus From a Taller Tower

ISBN:

9781477322635

OCLC:

1343103991