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Going Postal: School Shootings, Workplace Massacres, and the Untold History of America's Failed Rebellions
by
Mark Ames
An eye-opening look at the phenomenon of school and workplace shootings in America, Going Postal explores the rage-murder phenomenon that has plagued - and baffled - America for the last three decades, and offers some provocative answers to the oft-asked question, "Why?" By juxtaposing the historical place of rage in America with the social climate that has exist...more
Paperback, 304 pages
Expected publication:
December 13th 2012
by Soft Skull Press
(first published October 17th 2005)
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[EDITED TO INCORPORATE RECENT BRITISH NEWS EVENT:]
The argument : rage murders – workplace and school massacres – started in the 1980s and now there are a LOT of them. Americans blame this that and the other thing for all this hideous violence but they frantically avoid looking at the real culprit because to do so would mean they would have to face some harsh unacceptable political truths : it’s the conditions of life in workplaces and in schools, the toxic pressures of American m...more
The argument : rage murders – workplace and school massacres – started in the 1980s and now there are a LOT of them. Americans blame this that and the other thing for all this hideous violence but they frantically avoid looking at the real culprit because to do so would mean they would have to face some harsh unacceptable political truths : it’s the conditions of life in workplaces and in schools, the toxic pressures of American m...more
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Going Postal is an intriguing book to read, by that I mean it is compelling, well written, and nonsensical in equal measure. It is at times extremely difficult to take seriously -take one of the book's central contentions by way of example: the slave trade is a very good analog of life of the average worker in Post-Reaganite America. Seriously?
Notwithstanding the bizarre and lengthy tangents on slave rebellions the book is a well documented and perceptive history and analysis of inst...more
Notwithstanding the bizarre and lengthy tangents on slave rebellions the book is a well documented and perceptive history and analysis of inst...more
I definitely went through some form of anagnoresis when I read this book. The author makes a few very solid points near the beginning of the book, which have definitely changed the way I see the world today. Slavery did not end due to moral outrage, but because it wasn't economically viable anymore; assembly line work is much more productive. interesting, ok, although they obviously service completely different markets. Sure, workplace and school rampages are almost always committed by crazy peo...more
Definitely made me think more than I thought it would. Kind of obvious that certain things have declined since the late 1940s--1950s, which the author frequently cites as the halycon days for American workers.
And yeah we get the short end of the stick--least benefits, least vacation days, most dispensable in the first world--and I recognized a lot of the negative things that I see on daily basis in this book. The warning signs of whether a rage based murder could happen list in this b...more
And yeah we get the short end of the stick--least benefits, least vacation days, most dispensable in the first world--and I recognized a lot of the negative things that I see on daily basis in this book. The warning signs of whether a rage based murder could happen list in this b...more
This book is itself a little like a murder or accident scene - after a while, you want to look away, but just can't. Ames details the history of rage murders in America, a fairly recent phenomenon, focusing on schools and workplaces specifically, and makes a controversial comparison between rage murders and slave rebellions in the 1700s and 1800s. He writes a detailed account of the ways in which our workplaces have become especially draconian and oppressive, mostly as a result of an elimination...more
In Going Postal, Mark Ames presents a thesis so grim, so unacceptable in polite conversation that it's hard to even talk about without endless backpedaling and qualifications: that stress, the decline of the middle class, the decay of the American Dream -- essentially the entire character of our post-Reagan culture -- is directly responsible for rage killings and spree shootings in the workplace and school, phenomena that were almost totally unknown decades ago.
It sounds crass and hy...more
It sounds crass and hy...more
Nikk
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone interested in the ever-growing trend of mass school or workplace massacres
Recommended to Nikk by:
DB Book Forum
I thought this book was very interesting, and I only skipped about twenty pages of it, which slipped into the history of slave rebellion, and how it connected with the subject at hand. It's tough to get through sometimes, but overall it is completely worth the read. There are some points in the book where you just can't stop yourself from reading. I think I really enjoyed this book because it vocalized something I was unable to pinpoint for a long time. Something I felt, and I knew, and I unders...more
Compelling, full of scabrous rage, but at the moment I just don't have it in me to get through something this dark and polemical. Ames is not one to mince words & although some might question his specific thesis about the origins of workplace violence & modern day shootups at the office, I feel that he hits the nail on the head w/ his larger theme of America's tragic decline in the Reagan era. I can't stand this modern day revisionism that makes Reagan out to be some kind of nobel figurehead o...more
Someone did a disservice to this book, giving it a title and cover art that suggest something sensationalistic, if not totally exploitative of its subject matter. It will put some people off, and that's unfortunate, because it's not the case. Author Mark Ames approaches the subject intent on affirming his thesis, but his sympathy, and affinity, for working class America is obvious.
Reagan, Ames says, is responsible for a breathtaking transfer of wealth into the pockets of the few at t...more
Reagan, Ames says, is responsible for a breathtaking transfer of wealth into the pockets of the few at t...more
Nocheevo
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
disaffected middle class blokes who need a reality check after reading Fight Club
An interesting and confrontational hypothesis that almost comes off.......... the workplace/ school spree shootings in the USA in the last 15 years is a result of not an anomaly of a gun toting psycho but is a blacklast against the changes in the workplace and society as a result of Reaganomics (economic rationalism).
To a point the argument works but the book misses something to really clinch the argument, perhaps a more indepth dissection of a case would have worked. Some section s...more
To a point the argument works but the book misses something to really clinch the argument, perhaps a more indepth dissection of a case would have worked. Some section s...more
The author has two explanations for workplace shootings. The first is that since Ronald Reagan took office, corporations have broken their mutually beneficial compact with workers. In their rapaciousness, they have over-worked, downsized, and driven modern workers half-crazy—all with government help in the form of deregulation, neoliberal economic policy, and anti-union measures. Ames straight out blames Reagan for the rise of workplace shootings. People with no options and no hope lash out…whic...more
This is probably one of the scariest things I've read in a while--scary from a geopolitical, societal point of view, that is. The author pretty much lays bare the poverty- and depression-wracked horror-scape post-Reagan America has become and will in all likelihood continue to be. Wouldn't be surprised to hear that they're passing this book out to everyone attending occupy wall street--it's so up their alley. All in all, though, I walked away with the petrifying thought, "And I'm trying to ...more
Going Postal examines the phenomenon of rage murder that took America by storm in the early 1980's and has since grown yearly in body counts and symbolic value. By looking at massacres in schools and offices as post-industrial rebellions, Mark Ames is able to juxtapose the historical place of rage in America with the social climate after Reaganomics began to effect worker's paychecks. But why high schools? Why post offices? Mark Ames examines the most fascinating and unexpected cases, crafting a...more
I was half expecting Going Postal to be a sensationalist history of the most violent of shootings in recent American history. Instead the book is a frank and curious investigation of the psychology behind these acts of violence.
What Mark Ames finds is that most people don't snap no matter how bad the situation is. An otherwise mentally stable human being won't rebel against a bad situation even if an act of rebellion would result in a better situation for himself and others. A mental...more
What Mark Ames finds is that most people don't snap no matter how bad the situation is. An otherwise mentally stable human being won't rebel against a bad situation even if an act of rebellion would result in a better situation for himself and others. A mental...more
Hadn't realized office work was this unpleasant(ly organized), or that it has been this bad for this long already. Pretty amazing, disconcerting and depressing to see how much systemic abuse you can get away with building into a system before people will snap. (Making it all that much more important to not to take people seriously when they claim some change or other to be sustainable, given how easily abuse can be hidden and kept out of public discourse. Which brings up the question of how to p...more
Read this before and marked it up quite a bit also. Lots of great information and exciting, but grim and tragic. Skimmed it again looking at the parts I highlighted earlier as well as other large sections of the book. This is a good book to read if you want to get an idea of the Reagan influence on our country.
Peter
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Shelves:
journalism,
21st-century,
american-writers,
contemporary-society,
neoliberalism,
crime,
2000s
This book is haphazardly organized, uneven in tone, dwells far too much on gory details, engages in a lot of hyperbole and is very powerful. With all the books flaws, Ames still is one of very few people writing who can come out and say that the emperor has no clothes.
Yeah, it's hard to believe you'll be sympathetic to rage killers, but after reading Ames, you will be. He puts it into the context of how American's lives have gotten more stressful due to the effects or Reagan and assault on workers and unions and how Americans are working more, and are more stressed. It really does make sense.
It was interesting how he talked about the bully culture in schools, and how school principles media reject this theory. Ames's theory seems more correct, and th...more
It was interesting how he talked about the bully culture in schools, and how school principles media reject this theory. Ames's theory seems more correct, and th...more
A good history of postal, workplace, and school shootings--and also an angry rant against Reagan and the shitty institutions that make people "go postal".
Interesting, engaging ideas. I'd give it 4 1/2, if not for a severe lack of editing.
Art Fitz-Gerald recommended this book to me. First, it was very educating---I had no idea how common work place and school shootings have been in the last 25 years. Second, I found Ames's theory that to the future generations, these shootings will clearly appear as a nation-wide social revolution, rather than isolated incidents caused by unhinged individuals, very interesting. I wish I could remember the last line of the book, but it generally has to do with stringing up Reagan's body on the n...more
Honest, fascinating and informative.
An interesting book. Not sure I agree with his thesis, but it made me think.
A real different perspective on workplace/school shootings. Mark Ames lays it out in a broad historical and societal context but then also brings it to a very individual level as well. He makes very interesting parallels between the history of slavery and slave rebellion and the modern post-Reagan corporate workplace.
A good read for those who ask "why?" after watching the nightly news and want a straight answer.
A good read for those who ask "why?" after watching the nightly news and want a straight answer.
This book is scary.
i mentioned that i'm a great fan of the exile at exile.ru. i wanted to like this book more than i did but it's not a bad book. it makes a lot of important and daring points. but i was expecting more of the anarchic humor that i find on the exile even knowing full well that it wouldn't be appropriate for this topic.
A really engaging argument with troubling implications. Ames' radical misanthropy applied to sociological research is simultaneously entertaining, mind-opening, and reason for despair. Will permanently change your response to the glib pieties that are publicly repeated after every rampage murder.
Mark Ames takes a look at school and office shootings in America and compares them to slave rebellions. Anyone interested in the consequences of Reaganomics, or anyone who wonders why the hell America has so many wage slaves and disenfranchised youth killing each other, should read this book.
This has to be one of the most depressing books I've read simply because it looks into a part of humanity we don't like to think about.
Subversive and well argued. Only two years have past and its already due for a rather lengthy update.
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