American Blood: A History of Spectacle and Power

Nothing arrests us like blood. It seizes our attention, commanding us to act when it oozes into the open. In its own distinctive fashion, American public life has been tinged red with blood, from the Civil War to John F. Kennedy’s assassination to the AIDS crisis.

American Blood reexamines key episodes in US history to reveal blood as a main actor and show how it has profoundly shaped our culture and politics through its troubling...