Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives

An Amazon Best Book of October 2016: Reading about the deaths of children is emotionally crushing, which is exactly why Younge is making us do it. Picking one day in 2013 when ten children were killed by guns in the United States (the average day's toll is seven children), Younge wrenches our focus off cold statistics and turns it to the friends, families and neighborhoods shattered by these deaths. Through interviews with most (though not all) of the victims' families, Younge pieces together a picture of each child as well as the events that led to their deaths. Some killings are accidents; some might have been deliberate but those left behind aren't sure; and some are straight-up murder. The children come from different racial backgrounds, family structures, regions, and ages, making the method of their death the single thing they all have in common. A UK-born Guardian columnist who lives in the U.S., Younge brings an outsider's perspective and turns it into one of the book's core strengths as he questions commonly held beliefs about gun violence. I wish Younge explored more solutions in his narrative so that I had something hopeful to hold on to at the end. Instead, he holds true to his purpose of making these dead children far more than statistics, delivering a heart-buckling read that is all the more painful because it s real. --Adrian Liang, The Amazon Book Review