Author Event: Seamus McGraw

Page 158 Books presents a digital author event with Seamus McGraw to discuss his new book FROM A TALLER TOWER: THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN MASS SHOOTER. This event will be hosted on our crowdcast channel. You can RSVP for the event here.

We, as a nation, have become desensitized to the shock and pain we used to feel 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.

Seamus  Mcgraw  is  the  author  of  A  Thirsty  Land:  The  Fight  for  Water in Texas, The End of Country: Dispatches from the Frack Zone and Betting the Farm on a Drought: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate  Change.  His  award-winning  writing  has  also  appeared  in  the New York Times, Huffington Post, Playboy, Popular Mechanics, and Reader’s Digest.

Our event provides a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules may be expelled from the event without a refund at the discretion of the organizers.