The big question in “blood bath nation “by Paul Auster is how is America as a country one of the most gun loving, gun toting nations? In my opinion a country taken by violence and lead by men who were respected due to their rank in the military… With the exception of Obama and Donald Trump goes a long way to explain why we as Americans love guns. I too have respect for men who joined the military and fought in wars because every man who went and fought did so we can retain our freedoms but having said that I think The new question is how do we curve this attraction for something so deadly? I know that guns don’t kill people but people kill people but these are people with guns. I raised my son and didn’t allow him to have play guns cap guns whatever kind of guns and he grew up joined the military and was in it for nine years and even fought in the Iraqi war. So there’s no right or wrong way all we could do is teach our children to be responsible and respect these weapons of destruction and although we would love our politicians to be psychic and be able to tell when someone crazy is going to do something bad with a weapon but will never be able to stop those wanting to hurt others. I do agree that we certainly have no need to sell Machine guns. They aren’t for protection in your home. They are for mass killings. Anyway, in other countries where guns aren’t so plentiful they still have mass killings and in some cases have had poisonous gas put in ventilation systems. Not only that, one can make a bomb with house hold chemicals and garden fertilizers which is high in Nitrogen, which is a key ingredient in explosives. So if people are all out to kill others they’ll find a way. I really enjoyed this book although to be honest I could’ve lived without reading how the ER doctor treated a gunshot wound that was a bit detailed and a whole lotta gross. I did enjoy the first chapter about the authors life as a young boy and growing up I thought he had a lot of great insight to the failings of this great nation. I know a lot of people say America isn’t so great but these people that haven’t lived anywhere else and that’s a little like saying your mom is terrible until you see your friends mom beating her with a pipe. We take for granted the things that come easy to us it’s a lo of talk about a nation that is number one in a list of hundreds of nations to me seems ridiculous and ignorant. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. Please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review but all opinions are definitely my own. I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I have never been able to coherently articulate my feelings about guns. There are facts: I am an educator. I am a parent. School shootings and lockdown drills are terrifying. I also live in rural Minnesota, where my direct neighbor (three or so acres away) has targets to practice on, which we can see when we take the dogs for walks in the woods and can hear from our house. My sister and her husband live in Texas and own guns they take to the shooting range. I am not against gun ownership. I am terrified of guns. Those two things exist simultaneously.

Paul Auster, who is an absolutely, absolutely brilliant writer, explores this culture in a way that makes complete sense to me in Bloodbath Nation. We get so many good things in this slender hybrid book: personal essay as he reveals his family’s truth, critical essay as he faces national truths, deep and often undiscussed histories that help explain things for me. And photographs of sites of mass shootings, which are stunning in their stark reality.

I loved this book, though I don’t love why it exists. It is so damn smart and now I want to read everything Auster has written and then hope he writes more. It reads like a collection of fantastic linked New Yorker or Atlantic essays.

The title makes it seem like he’s an angry, yelly one-sided liberal, but it doesn’t read like that to me at all. I don’t think responsible gun owners would disagree with what he has to say at all.





Note: this review was also shared on my personal Facebook page as well as the stories on both my public and personal Instagram accounts.

This part-memoir, part-history book, part-essay was a short, heart-breaking read. Paul Auster connects his own history with guns to America's storied past with guns to our modern crisis of mass shootings. Spencer Ostrander's photographs that separate the sections of Auster's essay are chilling reminders of what is left over after a tragedy, after the country moves onto the next pressing crisis. Auster's book is a fantastic summary of guns in America and an overview of recent mass shootings.

The essay was written in the summer of 2021, so some parts definitely felt out of date (we now know how little the protests last summer moved the political needle towards change, New York no longer has a specific gun law mentioned in the essay due to the Supreme Court, countless more mass shootings that would be included in Auster's lists and discussions have occurred). However, Auster presents a clear view of how we got to the current world and the numerous obstacles that will have to be overcome to create change. This book serves as a great refresher and reminder of the current state of guns in America.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.