From a Taller Tower

The Rise of the American Mass Shooter

By: Seamus McGraw

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2021 Seamus McGraw (P)2021 Tantor

A meditation on America, Guns, and Choice

This book is an absolute mediation on the rise of the modern american mass shooter, and the choices - both conscious and unconscious we as a society have made that enable it. There is a phrase, that each shooter is there to kill the last shooter, to be more memorable and have a higher body count than the last. It talks about the good guy with a gun, and the trauma that is left behind on the survivors, the police, the first responders, the community.

This book is not a glorification, save for the 1961 Texas shooter, not one is named. No glory for this group of largely men, aided by the great american commitment to keep as many guns as possible in the hands of as many people as possible.

Powerful, meditative, and a must read.

Great Insight

Like so many, I ask why after another atrocity. This well-written (spoken) and well-researched book was worth the time to try and understand what so many of us don’t. I thought it was very un-biased and truly factual and enjoyed it. For those interested in true crime - not your book but for those seeking some kind of reason, this book lays out the case for where to start.