Ebook278 pages4 hours
From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
A history of the American mass shooter since 1966, and an analysis of how the nation makes sense of the senseless violence.
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.
“An important and extraordinary book that takes us into the mind of the mass shooter and also explores our own complicity in the numbing tragedies that have become far too routine in America. Still, Seamus McGraw manages to leave us with hope that there’s a way out of the despair.” —Perri Pelitz, director and producer, Axios on HBO
“A meditative history of mass murder by gunfire. . . . A memorable, necessary contribution to the national conversation on gun violence.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[From a Taller Tower] traces the history of the American mass shooter and the troubling ways we make sense of senseless violence . . . There’s a tragic timeliness to McGraw’s book.” —InsideHook
“One of the most important books you can read this or any year. It’s impossible to read this work without nodding or wincing or even crying.” —Patrick Skinner, detective, Savannah, Georgia
“From a Taller Tower is a careful, even cathartic, look at mass shooters and the culture that ushers them forth. McGraw dispels the myths “forged in gunfire” with a riveting examination of the before, during, and after of mass shootings.” —Amye Archer, co-editor, If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings
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.
“An important and extraordinary book that takes us into the mind of the mass shooter and also explores our own complicity in the numbing tragedies that have become far too routine in America. Still, Seamus McGraw manages to leave us with hope that there’s a way out of the despair.” —Perri Pelitz, director and producer, Axios on HBO
“A meditative history of mass murder by gunfire. . . . A memorable, necessary contribution to the national conversation on gun violence.” —Kirkus Reviews
“[From a Taller Tower] traces the history of the American mass shooter and the troubling ways we make sense of senseless violence . . . There’s a tragic timeliness to McGraw’s book.” —InsideHook
“One of the most important books you can read this or any year. It’s impossible to read this work without nodding or wincing or even crying.” —Patrick Skinner, detective, Savannah, Georgia
“From a Taller Tower is a careful, even cathartic, look at mass shooters and the culture that ushers them forth. McGraw dispels the myths “forged in gunfire” with a riveting examination of the before, during, and after of mass shootings.” —Amye Archer, co-editor, If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings
Read more from Seamus Mc Graw
A Thirsty Land: The Fight for Water in Texas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thirsty Land: The Fight for Water in Texas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Betting the Farm on a Drought: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetting the Farm on a Drought: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to From a Taller Tower
Related ebooks
Beyond These Fences: The Longest Night Series, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScarecrow Has a Gun: A Novel Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Snarl of the Beast: Race Williams #17 (Black Mask) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In The Beginning...: The Galilee Falls Trilogy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSix Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFall Creek Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBack To Black Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThief Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Nervous System Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe're All Mad Here: The Violent and Dead, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Traveler Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silver Bear Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doyenne Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Many Gates Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeaves In The Wind Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Absence Was Ecstasy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDead Man's Trivia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWalk The Edge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Criminal Gold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Promise of a Lifetime Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPistols Versus Bullets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExquisite Corpse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Fallen Hero Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Black Men and Steven Spielberg Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Midnight Strikes: Cinders In Midnight Glass, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Suicide Bridge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSnow Moon Charms: Full Moon Games, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction | No. 16 | May 2023: Dark Horses Magazine, #16 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter Dark: East End Irregulars, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhose Song?: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Crime & Violence For You
Summary of The 33 Strategies of War: by Robert Greene - A Comprehensive Summary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLost Girls: The Unsolved American Mystery of the Gilgo Beach Serial Killer Murders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Worse Than Slavery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Violent Abuse of Women: In 17th and 18th Century Britain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (2nd Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Enigma of Ted Bundy: The Questions and Controversies Surrounding America's Most Infamous Serial Killer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5H. H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death Row, Texas: Inside the Execution Chamber Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sleep, My Child, Forever: The Riveting True Story of a Mother Who Murdered Her Own Children Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Stone Unturned: The True Story of the World's Premier Forensic Investigators Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for the FBI Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chasing the Scream: The Inspiration for the Feature Film "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trial of Lizzie Borden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Regarding the Pain of Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for From a Taller Tower
Rating: 4.6666665 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
3 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
From a Taller Tower - Seamus McGraw
zEd book_preview_excerpt.html |rv'ZnVhϡHI,eYUhHt`u)8/yɬwfEIѡfᒗ}]x82/?wn̻ӏsv[aܛU'̛zю.3;=xǺۘ/k^?as3Po\.y-&0۸/FRκJS7y]ᨶ3!\_3ٵ-|]CsօyglÉtpy'sܞy}vss@i y ef77ζ@K6'½ҭ7dqU=־+tx>{m=xȌWSj$փpgʬ44<Ґ).5$TTx_?] I
ssiǮi*Q^*Ff}eG
O%kIS\
'E|a4n}8Q;g@Fÿ'"0kRx(<~2= <6dĜoRWgϻ*(BU37^)-e7oO|z7VL=O?,W2)_b0Bo˫[szquyf}2d^]\_|O̟Sm>_COO䙹zwv؇Oo^旫0[p\X5!