
The Violence Project
How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic
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Narrated by:
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Laurel Lefkow
About this listen
Using data from groundbreaking research on mass shooters, including direct accounts from the perpetrators themselves, The Violence Project charts new pathways to prevention and innovative ways to stop the social contagion of violence.
Peterson and Densley have examined hundreds of data points in the life histories of more than 170 mass shooters, from their childhood and adolescence to their mental health and motives, aiming to establish the root causes of mass shootings and figure out how to stop them. They’ve also interviewed living perpetrators of mass shootings and people who knew them, shooting survivors, victims’ families, first responders and leading experts, gaining a comprehensive understanding of the real stories, rather than the sensationalised media narratives that too often prevail.
Instead of offering mere thoughts and prayers for the victims of these crimes, this book shares data-driven solutions for exactly what we must do – at the individual level, in our communities and as a country – to put an end to these tragedies that have defined our era.
©2021 Jillian Peterson and James Densley (P)2021 Bolinda PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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It's time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings listeners inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. Eight years in the making, Trigger Points illuminates a way forward at a time when the failure to prevent mass shootings has never been more costly—and the prospects for stopping them never more promising.
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this book is one of many to be read on this topic
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International Handbook of Threat Assessment, 2nd Edition
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In recent history, planned violent attacks have persisted in the United States and abroad. These attacks have continued to illustrate the need for improved threat assessment and management efforts at local and national levels. In the few years since its publication in 2014, the International Handbook of Threat Assessment has become the gold standard textbook for the prevention of targeted violence. With this new edition, editors J. Reid Meloy and Jens Hoffmann have expanded their landmark text.
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Archaic Views
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How do we prevent the next school shooting? By knowing the warning signs. Dr. Langman's timely book presents practical, research-based guidance on anticipating and preventing mass attacks. Warning Signs is for all members of a school community, including school personnel, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, parents, and students. Drawing on lessons learned from dozens of thwarted plots and deadly attacks, Warning Signs provides the insight necessary to keep schools safe.
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Helpful!
- By Amy on 09-17-24
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Why Kids Kill
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Ten years after the school massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, school shootings are a new and alarming epidemic. While sociologists have attributed the trigger of violence to peer pressure, such as bullying and social isolation, prominent psychologist Peter Langman, argues here that psychological causes are responsible. Drawing on 20 years of clinical experience, Langman offers surprising reasons for why some teens become violent. Langman divides shooters into three categories, and he discusses the role of personality, trauma, and psychosis among school shooters.
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Excellent
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Sandy Hook
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Based on hundreds of hours of research, interviews, and access to exclusive sources and materials, Sandy Hook is Elizabeth Williamson’s landmark investigation of the aftermath of a school shooting, the work of Sandy Hook parents who fought to defend themselves, and the truth of their children’s fate against the frenzied distortions of online deniers and conspiracy theorists.
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Not What I Thought
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Rampage Nation
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In the past decade, no individual act of violence has killed more people in the United States than the mass shooting. This well-researched, forcefully argued book answers some of the most pressing questions facing our society: Why do people go on killing sprees? Are gun-free zones magnets for deadly rampages? What can we do to curb the carnage of this disturbing form of firearm violence?
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Depressing, but Inciteful Facts we should all know
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Trigger Points
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Overall
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It's time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings listeners inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. Eight years in the making, Trigger Points illuminates a way forward at a time when the failure to prevent mass shootings has never been more costly—and the prospects for stopping them never more promising.
-
-
this book is one of many to be read on this topic
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By: Mark Follman
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International Handbook of Threat Assessment, 2nd Edition
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- Length: 46 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In recent history, planned violent attacks have persisted in the United States and abroad. These attacks have continued to illustrate the need for improved threat assessment and management efforts at local and national levels. In the few years since its publication in 2014, the International Handbook of Threat Assessment has become the gold standard textbook for the prevention of targeted violence. With this new edition, editors J. Reid Meloy and Jens Hoffmann have expanded their landmark text.
-
-
Archaic Views
- By ricodiva on 11-22-23
By: J. Reid Meloy - editor, and others
-
Warning Signs
- Identifying School Shooters Before They Strike
- By: Peter Langman PhD
- Narrated by: Asa Siegel
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How do we prevent the next school shooting? By knowing the warning signs. Dr. Langman's timely book presents practical, research-based guidance on anticipating and preventing mass attacks. Warning Signs is for all members of a school community, including school personnel, mental health professionals, law enforcement officers, parents, and students. Drawing on lessons learned from dozens of thwarted plots and deadly attacks, Warning Signs provides the insight necessary to keep schools safe.
-
-
Helpful!
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-
Why Kids Kill
- Inside the Minds of School Shooters
- By: Peter Langman PhD
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ten years after the school massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, school shootings are a new and alarming epidemic. While sociologists have attributed the trigger of violence to peer pressure, such as bullying and social isolation, prominent psychologist Peter Langman, argues here that psychological causes are responsible. Drawing on 20 years of clinical experience, Langman offers surprising reasons for why some teens become violent. Langman divides shooters into three categories, and he discusses the role of personality, trauma, and psychosis among school shooters.
-
-
Excellent
- By Bob Van Horn on 02-17-23
-
Sandy Hook
- An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth
- By: Elizabeth Williamson
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman, Elizabeth Williamson
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on hundreds of hours of research, interviews, and access to exclusive sources and materials, Sandy Hook is Elizabeth Williamson’s landmark investigation of the aftermath of a school shooting, the work of Sandy Hook parents who fought to defend themselves, and the truth of their children’s fate against the frenzied distortions of online deniers and conspiracy theorists.
-
-
Not What I Thought
- By Andrea C. Shebuski on 03-13-22
-
Rampage Nation
- Securing America from Mass Shootings
- By: Louis Klarevas
- Narrated by: Christopher Price
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past decade, no individual act of violence has killed more people in the United States than the mass shooting. This well-researched, forcefully argued book answers some of the most pressing questions facing our society: Why do people go on killing sprees? Are gun-free zones magnets for deadly rampages? What can we do to curb the carnage of this disturbing form of firearm violence?
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The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines.
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Only Praise
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She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral. Now, she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words.
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Just, thank you.
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A Mother's Reckoning
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Performance
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On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong?
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Sad, but, Ultimately, Self-Serving
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Biased
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
How do we talk about bias? How do we address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those inequities? What role do we play? With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we need to face one of the biggest and most troubling issues of our time. She exposes racial bias at all levels of society - in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and criminal justice system.
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hoped for more on why bias and how to avoid it
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Children Under Fire
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 2017, seven-year-old Ava in South Carolina wrote a letter to Tyshaun, an eight-year-old boy from Washington, DC. She asked him to be her pen pal; Ava thought they could help each other. The kids had a tragic connection - both were traumatized by gun violence. Ava’s best friend had been killed in a campus shooting at her elementary school, and Tyshaun’s father had been shot to death outside of the boy’s elementary school. Ava’s and Tyshaun’s stories are extraordinary, but not unique.
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What about the kids that are left behind?
- By Denise on 04-11-21
By: John Woodrow Cox
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Mass Killers
- Inside the Minds of Men Who Murder
- By: David J. Krajicek
- Narrated by: Nick Landrum
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Can you predict killing sprees? What do mass killers have in common? Why do so many of them write manifestos online, and what do these tell us? These are some of the questions David J. Krajicek seeks to answer about mass killings, a topic that is becoming increasingly urgent and desperate. In recent decades, mass shootings worldwide have increased in their savagery and frequency.
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Pretty good book, unless you’re a triggered conservative.
- By Caske Redner on 05-08-24
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Gunfight
- My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America
- By: Ryan Busse
- Narrated by: Ryan Busse
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America's multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point.
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Outstanding
- By Kyle Turner on 10-27-21
By: Ryan Busse
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Talking to Strangers
- What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you’ll hear the voices of people he interviewed - scientists, criminologists, military psychologists.
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Enjoyable listen with some facts incorrect
- By Jim on 09-11-19
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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Why We're Polarized
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics.
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Good as an intro, skip if you’re a wonk
- By Tony on 01-29-20
By: Ezra Klein
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Medical Apartheid
- The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
- By: Harriet A. Washington
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge - a tradition that continues today within some black populations.
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Sobering... but necessary.
- By Dr. Pepper on 10-27-16
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The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
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I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
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Understanding Power
- The Indispensable Chomsky
- By: Noam Chomsky, John Schoeffel - editor, Peter R. Mitchell - editor
- Narrated by: Robin Bloodworth
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A major new collection from "arguably the most important intellectual alive" ( The New York Times). Noam Chomsky is universally accepted as one of the preeminent public intellectuals of the modern era. Over the past thirty years, broadly diverse audiences have gathered to attend his sold-out lectures. Now, in Understanding Power, Peter Mitchell and John Schoeffel have assembled the best of Chomsky's recent talks on the past, present, and future of the politics of power.
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Current times demand you get this into your head.
- By Comatoso on 08-12-15
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
What listeners say about The Violence Project
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- Jerry Shannon
- 06-21-22
Educational
Very interesting & informative.. Hopefully I have a better understanding of what triggers some of the behavior of others.
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- TW
- 04-17-23
LOVED THIS BOOK
I've always been curious about the brains of mass shooters and this explains it in such a clear way. I'd recommend anyone who is having trouble dealing with our current gun crisis give this a listen. as well as ppl who have ppl in their life who their concerned COULD commit a mass shooting. it really breaks down on what we as a society can do to stop the epidemic.
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- Peter Hildebrandt
- 05-30-22
Excellent clear eyed look at awful ongoing problem
I grit my teeth and plunged ahead into this incredible book. Discovering the book during news reports on the latest Texas school massacre, once I began listening it truly helped me understand the full complexity and proven solutions, This is a helpful hopeful book in the midst of gut wrenching ultimately preventable tragedy. Thanks for writing this book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Emily
- 03-14-25
Overall good summary of date surrounding mass shooting
The complexity to this problem is what makes the US unique in this issue. The book gives a good summary of the data surrounding mass shootings, studies to help decrease mortality rate and hope for the future. Listening to accounts from the shooter, the victims, victim families and shooters families was alarming, but powerful. I was honestly unprepared for how jarring it was and had to take breaks. This is incredibly powerful, and incredibly important work.
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- MAS
- 06-09-22
Excellent research and analysis of violence
A must read for anyone involved in anyway with violence!!!
A must read to all thick headed Republican elected officials who are blind to what is needed to stop mass shooting!
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- Phyllis Woodward
- 07-31-22
Review
The authors did very extensive research. This book was a very helpful guide to actually do something about this problem. Thank you very much for writing this book.
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- Chuck Adkins
- 10-13-22
Very well researched and written
The book is part of a very in depth empirical study on mass shooter incidents in the United States. The authors off the book dissect the incidents by profiling the shooters, locations, methods and motivations. They draw several conclusions the most notable of all is that there is no easy button, no one law, program or funding solution that will prevent a complex problem. Instead they offer several plausible options that you are worth you time to listen to.
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- Jennifer McMenamy
- 09-08-22
Incredible
This is an incredible book. I loved the straight-forward, no-nonsense, fact-based style it was presented in. Truly inspiring. I hope everyone in America will read it and be informed by it.
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-10-23
Important and Urgent
I read a few of the reviews saying it had a liberal bias and should have stuck to the facts. The facts are that the author explains in painstaking detail where the data came from, what methodology was used, where they are lacking data, etc. The author also provides many references, and has all of this information on the website. I suspect these reviewers are upset because some of the violent perpetrators specifically discuss online radicalization from right-wing extremist forums. That is a fact, not bias. The majority of church shootings happen in the South. That is a fact, verifiable. Not bias. It is factual to discuss how recent political events and media coverage have emboldened violent men, and this comes from those men themselves. This book is incredible, timely, and crucial.
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- Anna Bronson
- 02-20-24
Data driven
I appreciated the fact this book was consistently backed by data and not based on opinion. 
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