Children Under Fire: An American Crisis

Children Under Fire: An American Crisis

by John Woodrow Cox
Children Under Fire: An American Crisis

Children Under Fire: An American Crisis

by John Woodrow Cox

Hardcover

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Overview

Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction * Winner of the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice

Based on the acclaimed series—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—an intimate account of the devastating effects of gun violence on our nation’s children, and a call to action for a new way forward

In 2017, seven-year-old Ava in South Carolina wrote a letter to Tyshaun, an eight-year-old boy from Washington, DC. She asked him to be her pen pal; Ava thought they could help each other. The kids had a tragic connection—both were traumatized by gun violence. Ava’s best friend had been killed in a campus shooting at her elementary school, and Tyshaun’s father had been shot to death outside of the boy’s elementary school. Ava’s and Tyshaun’s stories are extraordinary, but not unique. In the past decade, 15,000 children have been killed from gunfire, though that number does not account for the kids who weren’t shot and aren’t considered victims but have nevertheless been irreparably harmed by gun violence.

In Children Under Fire, John Woodrow Cox investigates the effectiveness of gun safety reforms as well as efforts to manage children’s trauma in the wake of neighborhood shootings and campus massacres, from Columbine to Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Through deep reporting, Cox addresses how we can effect change now, and help children like Ava and Tyshaun. He explores their stories and more, including a couple in South Carolina whose eleven-year-old son shot himself, a Republican politician fighting for gun safety laws, and the charlatans infiltrating the school safety business.

In a moment when the country is desperate to better understand and address gun violence, Children Under Fire offers a way to do just that, weaving wrenching personal stories into a critical call for the United States to embrace practical reforms that would save thousands of young lives. 

*A Newsweek Favorite Book of 2021 *An NPR 2021 "Books We Love" selection *A Washington Post Notable Work of Nonfiction *A Kirkus "2021's Best, Most Urgent Books of Current Affairs" selection


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062883933
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 03/30/2021
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 1,079,788
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

JOHN WOODROW COX is a staff writer at The Washington Post. He was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing and has won Scripps Howard’s Ernie Pyle Award for Human Interest Storytelling, the Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, and Columbia Journalism School’s Meyer “Mike” Berger Award for human-interest reporting, among other honors. He attended the University of Florida, where he has taught narrative writing and currently serves on the Department of Journalism’s Advisory Council. He lives outside Washington, DC, with his wife, Jenn. 

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 "I Hate Guns"

Ava, Tyshaun, and the Bullets That Changed Them 1

Chapter 2 What Happened to Jacob?"

Twelve Seconds on a School Playground and the Town that Would Never Be the Same 15

Chapter 3 "I Can't Believe He Went Through with It"

Inside the Mind of a Teenage Gunman 33

Chapter 4 "You Have to Separate the Guns from the Kids"

Children and the Firearm Safety Myth 51

Chapter 5 "I Hope My Daddy's Okay"

How Gun Violence Leads to More Trauma and Trauma Leads to More Gun Violence 69

Chapter 6 "It's Nothing to Get a Gun"

The Plague of Illegal Firearms 91

Chapter 7 "Can You Stop Violence?"

The NRA's Faltering War on Common Sense 107

Chapter 8 "One Day has Ruined Everything She Does"

The Agony of a School Shooting Survivor 131

Chapter 9 "Tell Me When It's Going to be Normal"

A Return to Townville Elementary 161

Chapter 10 "There's No Guarantee I'm Going to Live"

When the Help that Children Need Never Comes 187

Chapter 11 "It's More than Just Protecting Children from Bullet Holes"

What Campus Lockdowns Do to Kids 203

Chapter 12 "Are You Going to Keep Kids Safe?"

How Ava Found Her Voice 215

Chapter 13 "That's Twenty-Nine Thousand Dollars a Kid"

The Business of School Security 227

Chapter 14 "Remember, You Can't See Daddy Anymore"

Father's Day and the One Who Wasn't There 247

Chapter 15 "I Cannot Promise You that it Will be Easy"

Why Some Kids Make It When Others Don't 261

Chapter 16 "Wall Understand Each Other"

Ava, Tyshaun, and the Anguish that Persists 277

Epilogue 287

Author's Note 295

Acknowledgments 297

Notes 301

Index 317

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