Malcolm Gladwell Announces ‘The American Way of Killing,’ a New Book Exploring the Nation’s Gun Violence Epidemic

In The American Way of Killing (out September 29, 2026) Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times bestsellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the award-winning podcast Revisionist History, gets to the heart of America’s gun violence crisis: Where did America’s violence problem come from? And, why has it proven so difficult to address?

From The Tipping Point to Blink to his podcast episodes, Gladwell has returned again and again to the topics of crime, policing, and punishment. In The American Way of Killing, he expands on his reporting originally featured in a series of Revisionist History episodes with new interviews and research. 

“In the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant,” Gladwell explains, “each man touches a different part of the animal and draws a different conclusion. One touches the trunk and decides the elephant is like a snake, one touches the animal’s leg and concludes that the elephant is a tree, one touches the tusk and concludes the elephant is like a spear — and on and on. I feel that this is the American problem: the source of the conflict and misunderstanding that marks so much of the ongoing argument over what to do about the country’s crime problem.”

The American Way of Killing is an argument for looking in unexpected places when trying to understand the American problem of lethal violence. Gladwell explores the profound absurdity of the way the nation handles violence through a series of stories — the miracle of a young gunshot victim in Washington D.C., the legal travails of a 17th century English knight, a professor in Alabama with a terrible secret, a famous town in Kansas that Americans have been lying to each other about for 100 years, and a prison in Germany that would be unrecognizable to any American, among others.

The American Way of Killing will be available in audio, print, and eBook, on September 29, 2026. Narrated by the author, the audiobook will feature Gladwell’s trademark audio-first production quality complete with original reporting and interviews, archival tape, sound design, and more. The audio edition will be produced by Pushkin Industries and published by RBmedia, with the print edition to be published by Little, Brown. Preorder the audiobook here and the print edition here.

“At Pushkin, we approach publishing as a strategic design process,” said Nicole Op den Bosch, SVP & Publisher at Pushkin Industries. “The American Way of Killing is the result of intentional, cross-format thinking, and our partnership with RBmedia and Little, Brown reflects a shared commitment to the craft of storytelling in both audio and print.”