Another Day in the Death of America

　　SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE, THE JHALAK PRIZE, THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION AND THE BREAD AND ROSES AWARD

　　Saturday, 23rd November 2013. It was just another day in America. And as befits an unremarkable day, ten children and teens were killed by gunfire. Far from being considered newsworthy, these everyday fatalities are simply a banal fact.

　　The youngest was nine; the oldest nineteen. None made the news. There was no outrage at their passing. It was simply a day like any other day. Gary Younge picked it at random, searched for the families of these children and here, tells their stories. Another Day in the Death of America explores the way these children lived and lost their short lives, offering a searing portrait of the vulnerability of youth in contemporary America.

　　Review

　　Formidably intelligent and tenacious. A tour de force of regulated passion. (Martin Amis)

　　This is Gary Younge's masterwork. You will never read news reports about gun violence the same way again. Brilliantly reported, quietly indignant and utterly gripping. A book to be read through tears. (Naomi Klein)

　　This book is a righteous challenge to the big insanities of American society; gun ubiquity, racism, poverty and the supine and bland media which taboos genuine discourse on them. It's all the more daring and subversive for its controlled and mannered tone, as it breaks the unwritten law: thou shall not humanize the victims of this ongoing carnage. (Irvine Welsh)

　　Another Day in the Death of America is a harrowing account of children's lives cut short by the ubiquity of violence in the United States. Drawn from suburbs and cities of every demographic, these sensitively researched portraits of virtually unknown victims and their grieving families expose the structural ties of race, class, and lack of gun control. Younge's book completes the picture of what violence looks like in contemporary America. (Claudia Rankine)

　　A gripping account of the conditions that turn so many of America’s powerless into victims... It’s easy to mourn lives cut down prematurely but what makes this book stand out is the strength of its analysis... In illuminating the stories of some of these people and of their communities, Younge has provided us with a beautifully told and empathic account that wrenches at the heart even as it continues to engage the brain. (Gillian Slovo Observer)

　　Deeply affecting... Younge vividly humanises the statistics, finding out all he can about each child, and trying to connect with the families and friends of the victims, to give context to what brought them to that deadly full stop. This might not be a book to make you eagerly turn pages, only because you might need to put it down to catch your breath and marshal your feelings, as one heartrending story follows another. (Margaret Busby The Sunday Times)

　　A magnificent piece of reportage... a searing and often poignant snapshot of American life... The book is written beautifully with elegance and heartfelt compassion. (David Pratt Herald)

　　Another Day in the Death of America, is as one would imagine it: sad and bleak, an altogether terrible tale ... His success is that for the hours you are absorbed in it, you start to see how life on the streets can be normal; that it might actually be ― gulp ― a blessing for the only real gangbanger among the deceased, Tyshon Anderson of Chicago (age 18), to have been brought down. ‘I’m just glad it’s over,’ says a family friend who loved Tyshon, ‘because now every day I have to live is a day when they’re not going to kill him. It’s a day when he’s not going to die.’ In other words, it’s every day since 23 November 2013. But for many families, that day comes tomorrow. (Eric Weinberger Spectator)

　　This might not be a book to make you eagerly turn pages, only because you might need to put it down to catch your breath and marshal your feelings, as one heartrending story follows another ... Only in his afterword does Younge reveal some of the emotion fuelling his meticulous investigative journalism. (Margaret Busby Sunday Times)

　　Some journalists would be embarrassed to mention it, but one of the joys of this book is that Younge, an editor-at-large for The Guardian, shows his working ... I’d expected Another Day to be rather po-faced, full of weepy interviews and testimony from social workers and academics ― and there is some of that. Yet it is also a travelogue; the story of Younge journeying through the Carolinas, the Deep South and Midwest, to the foot of the Diablo mountain range in southern California, chronicling the consequences of America’s gun habit. (Will Pavia The TImes)

　　A hard-hitting portrait of a country that seems to value the freedom to own a gun above the safety of children. (Prospect)

　　Immensely moving chapters devoted to each victim skilfully trace the narrative of these lost lives and the confluence of circumstances which led to such horrific endings, capturing the agony of their wasted potential.This is an unflinching examination of “structural inequality” which gets to the heart of communities “ripped apart by violence and poverty”, offering insight into grief and suffering. It is a book that should be required reading, contributing harrowing human stories to the debate around guns and violence in the US, and demonstrates the power of writing to break down “barriers to empathy”, evoke compassion and show how every human life should be valued. (Anita Sethi i Newspaper)

　　The book is at its most powerful and moving when it describes the effects of violence, on, for instance, the mother of a murdered nine-year-old who, a year on, stays awake to avoid her nightmares, then finds it hard to get out of bed in the morning and drag herself to work. Though his style is unhistrionic and his arguments measured, Younge is no outside observer, but someone with, as he puts it, “skin in the game. Black skin in a game where the odds are stacked against it." (Hari Kunzru The Guardian)

　　A work of careful research and measured rage (Dan Brotzel Irish News)

　　An evocative, powerful, well-written book that puts a human face - young human faces - to the shocking toll of largely unreported gun fatalities. It made me angry, sad, despairing and, on occasion, tearful ... I'd like to think Younge's book will snap America into some kind of action but sadly, it won't. (Piers Morgan Mail on Sunday)