Malcolm Gladwell on “The American Way of Killing”

Malcolm Gladwell, a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker, often uses ideas from the social sciences and epidemiology and applies them to surprising topics. But his new book tackles an issue that’s in the headlines every day. The book is called “The American Way of Killing,” and the subject is America’s unique association with gun violence. Death statistics, he says, fail to convey the scale of the problem because advances in medical care save countless lives that are nevertheless scarred by violence. Gladwell talks with David Remnick about how gun-control advocates have got the problem wrong, and why he thinks that a persistent dynamic of under-policing and over-incarcerating is at the root of America’s problem. “I can’t even utter the phrase ‘defund the police,’ ” Gladwell says, “without nearly blowing a gasket.”

Further reading:

• “What We Get Wrong About Violent Crime,” by Malcolm Gladwell
• “Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, and the Modern Whistle-Blower,” by Malcolm Gladwell 
• “Thresholds of Violence,” by Malcolm Gladwell

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