Book review: Another Day In The Death Of America

Gary Younge builds a picture of a society with a shockingly high tolerance for young, violent death by guns in America.

Gary Younge

Guardian Faber, £16.99;

ebook, £8.96

ON AN average day in the US, around seven under-19s will be shot dead. No other western democracy has a rate anywhere close to this, but to talk only in stats quickly has a numbing effect.

So to bring home the horror, award-winning Guardian journalist Gary Younge takes a single American day — November 13, 2013 — and digs into the stories of the 10 young people who lost their lives in that one 24-hour time frame.

Two were killed as a result of kids messing around with firearms. One nine-year-old was shot dead by his dad at point-blank range.

Some had involvement with gangs, others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

White, black and Latino, in hamlets and ghettoes and suburbs around the country, none of these deaths made the national news.

But for every child and their circle, each is an indelible tragedy.

Younge powerfully combines testimony and analysis to build a picture of a society with a shockingly high tolerance for young, violent death.