A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us about the Grand Canyon State and Life in America

A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us about the Grand Canyon State and Life in America

by Tom Zoellner

Narrated by William Hughes

Unabridged — 10 hours, 9 minutes

A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us about the Grand Canyon State and Life in America

A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us about the Grand Canyon State and Life in America

by Tom Zoellner

Narrated by William Hughes

Unabridged — 10 hours, 9 minutes

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Overview

A riveting account of the state of Arizona, seen through the lens of the Tucson shootings

On January 8, 2011, twenty-two-year-old Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a Tucson meet and greet held by US representative Gabrielle Giffords. The incident left six people dead and thirteen injured, including Giffords, whom he shot in the head.

Award-winning author and fifth-generation Arizonan Tom Zoellner, a longtime friend of Giffords' and a field organizer on her congressional campaign, uses the tragedy as a jumping-off point to expose the fault lines in Arizona's political and socioeconomic landscape that allowed this to happen: the harmful political rhetoric, the inept state government, the lingering effects of the housing market's boom and bust, the proliferation and accessibility of guns, the lack of established communities, and the hysteria surrounding issues of race and immigration.

Zoellner offers a revealing portrait of the southwestern state at a critical moment in history-and as a symbol of the nation's discontents and uncertainties. Ultimately, it is his rallying cry for a saner, more civil way of life.


Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Writer and fifth-generation Arizonan Zoellner (Uranium) seeks “to make sense of a fundamentally baffling event” in this rambling examination of the January 8, 2011, shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Jared Lee Loughner—22 years old, unemployed, and “obviously deranged”—killed six people and wounded 13, including Giffords, when he opened fire at a political meet and greet at a Tucson Safeway. Concluding that events “never happen in a vacuum,” the author searches for clues to the tragedy in the context in which the shooting took place. He finds his answers in the dysfunctional social and political culture of Arizona—its isolation, misplaced paranoia about immigration, gun laws, the “withering” of its mental health care system, absent leadership, and the partisan nastiness of politics and talk radio. Even while conceding that there is only one responsible party for the tragedy and that he is “gravely mentally ill,” Zoellner concludes that “Loughner’s feelings of existential helplessness were a distorted amplification of what surrounded him that year in Arizona.” Zoellner, a personal friend of Giffords, admits that this is “not a work of objective journalism,” and his subjective rendering of Arizona proves problematic, as is his effort to connect the dots between cause and effect. (Jan.)

author of House of Good Hope Michael Downs

A compelling cry from the heart, this poignant book mixes an intimate personal story with painstaking journalism and in doing so draws meaning from a terrifying attempt at political assassination. A Safeway in Arizona reveals the life-and-death consequences of alienation in an asphalt desert, and it makes a simple, forceful appeal: give a damn about your neighbor.”

author of Cold New World: Growing Up in a Hard William Finnegan

This is a remarkable book. It was deeply reported before Tom Zoellner could have known he would write it. It was deeply reported after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords made it absolutely necessary for him to write. Zoellner’s long, intense relationships with his two main subjects—Giffords and the state of Arizona—give enormous authority to his storytelling. Unsentimental but driven by powerful emotion, the book makes crisp, riveting, expansive sense of a tragedy that was far more than a random massacre by a madman.”

author of Down by the River Charles Bowden

Tom Zoellner brilliantly captures the slow death of Tucson and how one disturbed young man trapped in this emptiness shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and wounded and killed other people. This is a tale created by greed in the Southwest, and written in blood.”

author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America Richard Rodriguez

Tom Zoellner’s remarkable book about a moment of tragedy in Arizona ends up a story of survival—a wounded congresswoman’s survival, and a wounded nation’s survival as well.”

Product Details

BN ID: 2940169908398
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date: 12/29/2011
Edition description: Unabridged
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