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    Lethal Passage

    The Story of a Gun

    Author Erik Larson On Tour
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    Paperback
    $17.00 US
    Knopf | Vintage
    On sale Jan 15, 1995 | 304 Pages | 9780679759270
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    This devastating book begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace: on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-11/9 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By day’s end, he had killed one teacher and severely wounded another.

    In Lethal Passage Erik Larson shows us how a disturbed teenager was able to buy a weapon advertised as “the gun that made the eighties roar.” In so doing, he not only illuminates America’s gun culture—its manufacturers, dealers, buffs, and propagandists—but also offers concrete solutions to our national epidemic of death by firearm. The result is a book that can—and should—save lives, and that has already become an essential text in the gun-control debate.


    “Larson takes us past the absurd myths, past the numbing statistics, and into the face of reality. . . . Journalism at its highest.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
    © Nina Subin
    Erik Larson is the author of seven national bestsellers—The Demon of Unrest, The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than twelve million copies. His books have been published in nearly forty countries. View titles by Erik Larson
    "Larson takes us past the absurd myths, past the numbing statistics, and into the face of reality.... Journalism at its highest."

    -- Los Angeles Times Book Review



    "An artful slice of the story of what may be the greatest shame we as a nation have tried... to hide from ourselves.... Fascinating." -- Chicago Sun-Times

    About

    This devastating book begins with an account of a crime that is by now almost commonplace: on December 16, 1988, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Elliot walked into his Virginia high school with a Cobray M-11/9 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By day’s end, he had killed one teacher and severely wounded another.

    In Lethal Passage Erik Larson shows us how a disturbed teenager was able to buy a weapon advertised as “the gun that made the eighties roar.” In so doing, he not only illuminates America’s gun culture—its manufacturers, dealers, buffs, and propagandists—but also offers concrete solutions to our national epidemic of death by firearm. The result is a book that can—and should—save lives, and that has already become an essential text in the gun-control debate.


    “Larson takes us past the absurd myths, past the numbing statistics, and into the face of reality. . . . Journalism at its highest.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

    Author

    © Nina Subin
    Erik Larson is the author of seven national bestsellers—The Demon of Unrest, The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac’s Storm—which have collectively sold more than twelve million copies. His books have been published in nearly forty countries. View titles by Erik Larson

    Praise

    "Larson takes us past the absurd myths, past the numbing statistics, and into the face of reality.... Journalism at its highest."

    -- Los Angeles Times Book Review



    "An artful slice of the story of what may be the greatest shame we as a nation have tried... to hide from ourselves.... Fascinating." -- Chicago Sun-Times

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