About this item
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-119 and several hundred rounds of ammunition tucked in his backpack. By days 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 Americas 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.
About the Author
Erik Larson, author of the international bestseller , was nominated for a National Book Award for , which also won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing. His latest book, , has been acquired for publication in 20 countries and optioned by Tom Hanks for a feature film. Erik is a former features writer for The Wall Street Journal and Time. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and other publications. Larson has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, and the University of Oregon, and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast. He lives in Seattle with his wife, who is the director of neonatology at the University of Washington Medical Center and at Children's Hospital of Seattle, and the author of the nonfiction memoir, Almost Home, which, as Erik puts it, "could make a stone cry. " They have three daughters in far-flung locations.
