where did you get the image? >> i think the image conveyed a little bit of -- sort of how i felt about this mission as i observed it unfold which was kind of like -- at times kind of -- it brought to mind sort of the ronald reagan saying i'm from the government. i'm here to help. yes, we are. our military is there. they are there to help. they are there to do, you know, fundamentally humanitarian things. that's a mission that they have embraced. it's a rewarding mission. but it's one that also has the unintended consequences. so i wanted to at least share that there's a little bit of an ironic juxtaposition there. >> "armed humanitarians: rise of the nation builders" the author is nathan hodge. >> up next. christopher strain looks at why american society is so violent.

he talked about the book at the west palm beach library in florida for 40 minutes. >> they say that i'm glad to be here today at the west beach public library. i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all about my latest book. i'd also like to thank andre rizzo for her help in coordinating this and making it happen. i would like to talk to you a bit first about the genesis of the book and about how i came to write it. then i've got some selections that i will take you through from the book and read a little bit, and leave time for questions and answers towards the end. but this book grew directly out of my work in the classroom. often times with professors research and teaching are two very different things.

compartmentalized without much to do with one another. and this book derived from a course that i taught originally at the university of california and then at florida atlantic university on violence. the class began as a class dealing with violence in american history. it dealt with war, it dealt with racial strife, it dealt with labor unrest, and familiar topics. and it seemed as if every time i taught this course, which has wound up being about every other year for the past 12 years now, something horrible happened in the news. some sort of school shooting and mass shooting. so we wound up talking more and more in this history class about current events. we were trying to place these

events in some sort of context. we were trying to make sense of what was happening. and when i taught the class in 1997, there were school shootings in west kentucky, pearl mississippi, when i taught in 1999, the shootings at columbine high school happened, two years later in 2001, there was a school shooting in sante, california, and again in minnesota, again in 2005 in red lake, minnesota. i was actually teaching this course in the spring semester of 2007 when the shooting in blacksburg, virginia occurred at virginia tech. my students were getting ready for the final exams. and it became imperative to

share what i had learned in prepping for this course. i was rather than at first to deal with the current events. but my students kept dragging me into the present and sort of forcing me to deal with the issues that were happening in present time. and in the wake of the virginia tech shooting, i felt that that need to write about what had happened. i this a sabbatical in the phallismsic of 2007. and i sat down and began to write up the research and write up the discussions that i've had which were enlightening with my students and pulled me into the new place and new ways of wrestling with the questions of violence in our society. it seemed to be something that we couldn't get away from. and so i did that. i sat down to write. and i was working on the project for about a year.

i was actually wrapping it up in the fall of 2008 when my phone rang at florida atlantic university. the phone in my office rang, it was my father, and he was calling to let me know that i shouldn't be alarmed about what was on cnn. i said i didn't know what he was talking about. he told me that there had been a bombing at his place of work in a small town in georgia where i grew up. and the details of what had happened materialized over the next few hours. it was chaotic. i wound up flying from florida to georgia, but a disgruntled client had packed an suv full of explosives and rammed it repeatedly into my father's office building and tried to blow it up. it didn't work quite as the man had planned, but he did kill

himself in the process and destroyed the building and a number of people were hurt. and so that prompted a retrospective sort of look at violence in my own life. and it personalized this violence that had been -- that i had been studying in a very abstract way in an academic setting and an academic context. but as i thought -- as i was wrapping up the writing for this book, i began to think about my own life as it relates to violence. and i began a different kind of writing that i'd never done before. much more personal which is reflected in the preface and introduction in this book. but i began to think about my own life. and how much violence i had experienced in various ways and various places, as a boy, and a

small town in georgia growing up, and as a student at various universities, and just as the citizen in various places in different towns across the united states. and the incidents added up. and the crime added up. and i thought about different things that i had seen. fistfights and altercations. i didn't consider myself a particularly violent person. i didn't consider myself someone who courted violence. but it seemed present in my own life. if it's something that i'm dealing with a lot, as, you know, as a history professor, as someone who leads a fairly quiet existence, it must be something that other people deal with in a

much more present way. so this incident prompted a sort of retrospective moment in thinking about this and sort of context chillizing the -- contextualizing the violence. i wrote about that in the book as well, about the incident in georgia in 2008. i was turning in my head how to write it up, and how to think about violence. and a lot of scholars and a lot of writers and thinkers, and a lot of intellectuals in american life have talked about violence in various ways. they have tended to focus on particular incidents, particular topics, ones that had captured the public imagination at different points. in the 1960s, it was assassinations, it was race riots in the 1970s, and gang

warfare in the 1980s, drive-by shootings in the early 1990s, carjackings in the late 1990s, school shootings, seemed like there was always some aspect of violence being considered and discussed and studied by academics. but there were very few larger studies that talked about violence in general. and that's really what interested me because it seemed that in the wake of these mash shootings and school shootings that had been happening over the previous decade, there was no discussion of how to make things better, how to improve it. there were sort of some short term small solutions, but there was no attempt to discuss violence in american life writ large. that's really where the book comes from. i'd like to read a few

statistics that may help illustrate the scope of what i see as a major problem in american life. it was a passage from the introduction. statistics indicate shocking discrepancies. according to the justice department, the homicide rate increased in the united states from a spike of 10.5 per hundred ,000 to 6.91. the lowest rate since 1967. by comparison, according to world health, the homicide rate in france, germany, and great britain in the same year in 2000 were .6, .8, and .9 respectively. children in the united states are far more likely to be shot and killed than their

counterparts and other industrial nations. the firearms homicide rate is 16 times higher for american children. as alarming as such numbers maybe, the united states homicide rate involving -- it is the united states homicide rate involving handguns that makes the united states stand apart internationally. in 1996, for example, handguns were used to murder 30 people in great britain, 106 in canada, 15 in japan, and 9,390 in the united states. the cdc, center for disease control, reports the rate of firearm deaths, that is the number of americans shot to death per hundred thousand as hovers between 8.8 and 9.2 for white americans in 2000 and 2005, between 7.5 and 7.8 for hispanic or latino americans, and between 18.4 and 19.3 for

african-americans. such statistics suggest that there is something unique and frightening happening in the united states. of course, the homicide rate is only one measure of violence. i talk about all kinds of different things in the book. and in part, that's the point. to sort of look at under currents of violence in american life to look at what i call the ethoughts of violence in american culture and american society. and accordingly, i spend time in the book in the first chapter looking at violence as a male phenomenon. violence is predominantly something done by men to other men to women, to children as well. and so i wanted to look at the violence of american

masculinity, how masculinity is constructed in the united states, and to look at how boys are socialized into becoming men in this nation. and i found that in part there are ways in which violence has sort of built into that process. talk about that in the first chapter, the second chapter of the book is entitled tell violence, and it deals with violence in the media, violence on television, violence in movies, hollywood violence, and it's no surprise to you to hear that there's a lot of violence in all of these media. and i looked in particular at entertainment. and how we entertain ourselves matters, i think. i looked at the research, and a

lot of people are interested in this -- and whether or not there's a causal relation between media violence and quote, unquote real world violence. violence that's happening out in the world. i'd like to read just a brief passage about that if i may. again, this passage begins with discussion of the problem by different groups beginning with the surgeon general. in 1972, the surgeon general report, television and growing up, the impact of televised violence provided an aauthoritative warning, as did the national institute of health in 1982 and the american psychological association in 1992. health care have since agreed on the dangers. on july 26, 2000, the american medical association, the american academy of pediatrics, the american psychiatric association, the american

psychological association, the american academy of family physicians, and the american academy of child and adolescent psychiatry issued a statement on the impact of entertainment violence on children. an exert which was endorsed by both houses of the united states congress reads quote the conclusion of the public health community based on over 30 years of research is that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. in addressing whether or not media violence causes real life violence, skeptics have been quick to observe some studies on the effects of media violence has been flawed and correlation does not prove causation. millions of people view televised violence every day

without acting in an overtly violent fashion. they correctly point out and the many studies is that have sought to prove or disprove the causal link certainly warrant a degree of skepticism. there is some evidence that media violence makes people more violent, that is that it directly translates into post viewing violent behavior, but the evidence is largely anecdotal and limited to certain individuals. few knowledgeable individuals would argue the sustained causal relationship has been proven between media violence and violence in society. but as newton minnow, professor hat university and former chairman of the federal communication commission, fcc, has observed, social science is not in the proof business. but in the business of identifying relationships and

measuring their significance, strength, and direction. and end quote, these are my words, and the relationship between media violence and real-life violence are strong and undenially significant. for those won over by empirical studies, there is lots of research showing that prolonged viewing of violent imagery can increase aggression towards others, desensitize viewers, and increase fear of becoming a victim of violence. such were the findings of the 1994 national television violent study, a three year effort by researchers from four universities over seen by several national policy organizations. others have confirmed these findings. there's also evidence that prolonged viewing of violent imagery can cause what psychologist call the disinhibition, the viewing of violent media can remove or

reduce reservations that people may have with regard to performing aggressive asks that they already know. so in theory, you know, seeing bugs bunny, you know, blow up while e. coyote, or seeing arnold schwarzenegger go through enemy soldiers can disinhibit acts of aggression, such as pushing or shoving or hitting in viewers, regardless of age. future studies may confirm as disinhibition of one of the more onerous affects of watching violent imagery. i talk more in the book about this relationship, about correlation and causality, and about the relationship between media violence and real life violence. there's a chapter in the book on guns and the gun culture in the

united states. and i'd be happy to talk more about that. let me just read a brief passage. what i've tried to do is not rehash the same tired arguments regarding the second amendment and the constitutionality of gun ownership in the united states. because that discussion has reached, i think, an impasse. those -- and it's a debate and a vie log that's controlled by those at the extremes. what i've tried to do is sort of reconstitute the discussion about guns and the gun culture. which as it turns out is a really important part of american life. let me just read this brief passage. the arguments about guns and gun control in the united states are as tired as those regarding media violence. while studio executives and parental watchdogs have succeeded in maintaining a

debate about an issue that could have and should have been resolved years ago, the gun nuts and gun grabbers alike have perpetuated an even longer argument worn in it's after rims. it is a debate controlled at the fringes. one extreme, ban all guns, and other is increase the armament of our already heavily-armed nation. gary, a professor of criminology has characterized the debate. what is needed is fresh perspectives in ways of avoiding the talking points that inevitably lead to infringement and stalemate. a couple of more things and i'd like to entertain any questions that you all have.

i think one of the -- again, sort of more dangerous aspects of the many manifestations of violence in american society and american culture are the ways that it is normalized and mainstreamed so that kinds of extreme violence become more and more routine and more and more regular. this is something that is a phenomenon in media violence. but in other things as well. there's a chapter in the book that deals with what i call the combat culture. new interest in fighting sports, mixed martial arts, and ultimate fighting championship, which has aired on spike television. and i should point out, i guess, at this point in this discussion that these are all elements of our popular culture in which i

freely partake. i watch violent movies, i would watch violent television, i watch mixed martial arts, i have participated in shooting sports, and i have owned guns at various points. so i can talk more about that too. but -- and i will -- but let me just read something quickly about this issue of normalization and mainstreaming. it is possible to ignore the rawest of the raw, the most acute, moderate, and obsessive kinds of violence, as long as they exist on the periphery, and social morals define them as extreme. but what happens when the extreme becomes increasingly ordinary? mainstreaming extreme violence is problematic, because that violence becomes normalized and habitual in daily american life. once normalization occurs, it is

difficult to gain critical perspective on the violence, making it part of the warp and woof of everyday life. the bigger concern is that tolerance of violence is expanding as depictions become more persuasive, and important, a majority of people have become insulated that violence represents. in the end of the book, i talk about the ideas and fixing and addressing this problem of seemingly random violence. i make the argument in the book there is no such thing as random violence. and that violence directed at no one specifically is, in fact, violence directed at all of us collectively. and i think until we wrap our

minds around that, the incidents such as what happened in tucson a few weeks ago, incidents such as what happened in blacksburg, in 2007, incidents such as what happened in littleton, colorado in 1999, will continue. but i find hope ultimately in the ability of us collectively to address these issues and to make our world a better place. let me read the passage and the conclusions. it is the beginning of the conclusion that discusses what i call vio sense. at this very moment, it is possible to fix the problem of deadly interpersonal violence in the united states. we have not only the knowledge to curb the mayhem in our streets, schools, workplaces and homes. but also the means to shape a

society relatively free of danger and fear. we can create a peaceful lawful nation in which the taking of human life is shocking aberration instead of a common occurrence. this newer, better nation would require minimal sacrifice in terms of rights and liberties. in fact, it could easily exist in the current framework of laws and social morals. it would mainly entail a shift in attitude, an adjustment in how we accommodate violence in our families, entertainment, public spaces, government, and in our dealings with other sovereign nations. such a change is not utopian fantasy. it falls within the realm of possibility. that's the good news. the bad news we have to deal with unpleasantries.

how does violence manifest in our society? we have to face up to the ugly record of assaults, rapes, and killings happening around us. but how? how can we deal with the limitations imposed by our own limited vantage points. the biggest impediment to positive change maybe a personal one. our own inescapable sense that things must be the way they are. we wonder what we can do already convinced that the answer is nothing. when viewing the overall pattern of violence, we find it difficult to make sense of the chaos. the pattern is obscure. like looking at heavily pixulated image. they see blocks. but by holding the pixulated image at arms length, a pattern emerges. a mind shift occurs.

it becomes a matter of paralax, depth perception, change in position, becomes change in perspective. i'm hopeful there are ways to address the problem of random violence to address the problems of mass shootings. i think it requires the creation of a national conversation of public dialogue about all of the issues and how they interlock. we have been good at addressing particular problems. like drive-by shooting in the 1980s, or carjackings in the early '90s. and the violence writ large.

and i hope that this book is a step in that direction. i hope he's able to contribute to a kind of dialogue. i said that i would talk a little bit about myself. and i'm self-conscious doing this. as an academic, i don't usually. but this is a part of the book. let micra's this by the -- me address this by the way of conclusion. then we can open it up to some answers too. let me read the passage. this is from the preface. while a large part deals with guns and instruments of violence, i should note i don't find guns detestable. on the contrary, i have gotten a great deal from them. nor do i think that video games are reprehensible, not for the

content, but for the ability to eat up entire afternoons. i've played games such as grand theft auto, vice city, max payne, unreal tournament which is a first person shooter that rewards head shots for hours on end. i have watched "pulp fiction" more times than i care to admit, and the ultimate fighting championship has usually faded after the bare knuckle blows. does all of this make me a bad person? a hypocrite? perhaps. or maybe it just makes me american. on any given day like most of us, i am unaware of the cognitive dissonance. on other ways i'm remorseful. have my joy stick when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. while i remain untroubled about

guns or video games or violent films on their own, i do confess a growing unease about how the elements freely combine in our society and towards the end. are there ill effects cumulative, or do they catalyze into something different. new and dangerous toxin born of other chemicals in the environment. i've only begun to understand and appreciate how they potential one another, like a bad combination of drugs to create unhealthy levels of violence. i harbor a special concern about how the ingredients interact with american notions of masculinity in a way that exercise baits violent outcomes. let talk about all of this in greater detail in the book. in part why i'm here today as the west palm beach public library is to encourage conversation, to have a dialogue, and i would like to stop and answer questions and maybe we can talk together about

ways to address some of these issues. thank you so much. are there any questions? [inaudible] >> the question is have i studied suicide at all in the book? and the answer is yes.

i can actually provide a few statistics about -- about suicide. i haven't studied youth suicide in particular. i do address it at a couple of points in the book. if i may, if you'll permit me to read a little bit again from the text. accidents, gun accidents account for two or three firearm deaths every cay in the united states. most are self-inflicted and caused by handguns which are easy to point in unsafe direction, and most occur in routine gun handling, such as cleaning or handling. approximately 13 victims for injured serious enough to be treated in hospital emergency rooms. in other words, every day more than 30 americans are nonfatally shot by themselves or by someone else. this addresses your questions, such figures do not account for deliberately self-inflicted

gunshots which are even higher. since 1965, more than half a million americans have committed firearmss -- i'm sorry have committed suicide with a firearms, nearly 10 times as many that have died from gun-related accidents. almost 50 people kill themselves with guns in the united states. more than by all other methods of suicide combined. and the thing about guns, guns facilitate suicide in the same way they facilitate killing others. firearms are typically the most lethal. that's what makes guns such an important part of the discussion about decide. but, yes, decide -- yes, suicide is a huge part of the problem. i discuss it in the book. it's a good question. i'm glad you asked that. thanks. >> i'm always interested in the

contrast in violence between the united states and canada because there's so many different assumptions in their country. but one the things that is very jarring to me throughout the united states are gun shows. because even when you go, you are from the outside, it's a carnival atmosphere that's going on with them. just as we have shows for everything else. it is probably as focused on its market as the boat show will be next week right here. and yet they don't -- i'm told they don't even have gun shows in canada. and the different set of assumptions that people have even though there's a very high percentage of gun owners in canada as well too. i know you are concentration is american violence, but if you paid much attention to the contrast with canada? >> that's a great question. two points that i'd like to

address. one the comparison between the united states and canada, in order to make sense of violence in the united states, i think that we have to treat it comparatively. we have to look at what's happening in other nations in other nations. one of the misconceptions about canada is that canada has fewer firearms than the united states. they do have, i think, numerically fewer firearms, firearms are prevalent, canada is a hunting society, there are a lot of guns. >> gun ownership is higher, i understand. >> percentage of ownership is quite high. i'm not sure if it is higher, but i trust you if you know. and so that to me makes it even more important to understand these sort of cultural differences and underlying occurrence of violence.

if there are similar numbers of firearms in canada, why is there more violence in the united states? that's a more difficult question. there are other societies that have high proportions of gun ownership. scandinavian nations, sweden and every household has a long gun in it because men serve in the militia, they are trained. high numbers of guns in the society. very few incident of personal violence. then there are places like japan. they have all been focused on japan in the news over the past week. and japan has very -- what i would call high levels of cultural violence if you watch japanese cinema, if you are familiar with manga and animea, and low levels of personal

violence in japan. these are all things that we should know first of all, and second of all, study more closely in trying to figure out what's happening here in the united states. the other point that i wanted to address that you brought up about gun shows is that there's a wonderful new book, relatively new book out by joan berbick that is called "gun show nation" in which she also trying to look at this climate of violence in the united states, but understand the gun culture on its own terms. i think that it's easy for a number of gun control advocates and anti-gunners to sort of write off gun enthusist as a rational or to write off their interest in firearms. i think that's a mistake. i think berbick makes a

conscious effort to sort of get inside the gun culture. she writes the book at visiting a number of gun shows and interviewing people there about their ideas on politics, about their ideas about firearm and their place in american history and american society. and i think that's a step in the right direction. sort of creating a new sort of dialogue between those who were interested in firearms, you know, pro and against. thank you. let me say again i'm glad to be here today. i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you all. i hope that we can treat this as a beginning of conversation that beginning of a dialogue, and not an end. so i think we are at the end of our time now. thank you so much. i appreciate it.

>> book tv has 48 hours of nonfiction authors and book programs every weekend on saturday 8 a.m. to monday morning at 8 eastern. get the complete schedule sign up for the booktv alert alert -- >> thomas allen has written a new book "tories" who were they? >> they were people that didn't have to have independence from england. they started to talk, it was all political until concord and lexington. then there was a time when you could sort of take of position of being against the revolution and not get into too much trouble. but once the declaration of

independence comes along, you suddenly have two americas. and the america that has declared for independence has the americans that are not fighting for independence. they align with military troops and form military units and go and fight. uniforms, weapons, the whole thing. and when the -- when the battles take place, the british who have a grand tradition of keeping a history of the regiments kind of look at -- with the same after these colonials who are fighting with them. and the result is you get a lot of british descriptions of battles that was very hard to find descriptions by the loyalist as they call themselves but -- when the arm comes to an

end, and they have to tell the british commission on loyalist what they did then there's a whole bunch of documents that describe exactly what it was that they were doing. what they were doing was killing other americans. it's a very interesting lost story. >> how many americans for tories? >> the estimates from john adams was 25% or 1/3 of more modern estimates take it in the same parameter. so that you have a politic of about, i don't know, 1,200,000. you have somewhere between 80 and 100,000. in terms of who leaves, you can kind of get the numbers about who goes up to canada. but it returns in that area.

it's an amazing story. the people who don't want a revolution at the end of the war have to go somewhere. so they are exiled essentially. the british give them a lot of hand up in canada. they found canada. and so you have a country here that's formed by revolutionaries, and you have a country up there that's formed by nonrevolutionaries. and that's the basis for the american -- for the canadian character. and basis for the american character. revolutionaries and nonrevolutionaries. >> where did the term tories come from? >> it's lost in antiquity, but probably it was an irish term for highway men. and it was used in british politics, parliamentary politics

long before the revolution. and it still is. yeah, yeah, and it still has essentially the same meaning. even in parliament, from would be a split between how much do you support the kings ministers and how much do you support the opposition. so they were the tories. when the revolution begins, they inherit that name and the rebels or the patriots or sons of liberty, they all get their own name. that's the way a lot of the politics starts. but then when the guns are fire department, then you have people whom are sticking up guns. >> that was a preview of thomas allen's new book, "tories" fight the for the king in the first civil war. book tv covered mr. allen in an longer event. if you'd like to watch the full event, go to booktv.org and use

the search function in the upper left hand corner to watch the full event online. >> here's a look at some of the upcoming book fairs in the country. :