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Lawrence B. Goodheart, Randolph Roth. American Homicide. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2009. Pp. xv, 655. $45.00, The American Historical Review, Volume 116, Issue 1, February 2011, Pages 137–139, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.116.1.137
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“Violence is American as cherry pie.” So famously declared militant H. Rap Brown during the late 1960s in what appeared to be a self‐evident truth at a time of social upheaval. In terms of homicide (defined here as death caused by willful assault outside of military combat), Brown's assessment is correct for the period since 1900, when the United States became number one in homicides among affluent nations. For most of the century, the homicide rate has been six to nine per 100,000 persons, except for a brief period in the 1950s when it dropped. A comparative approach puts the situation in stark perspective. Canada, with the next highest ranking, has only a quarter of the homicides as the United States since 1945. Ireland at the other extreme has one‐tenth the rate of the United States. The United States is first when populations are compared by ethnicity and gender. White Americans, the least likely group to be murdered, are still killed at a rate two and a half to eight times that of peer nations. The risk of being killed is greatest in the South and among the poor, but middle‐class northerners outpace the murder rate in other high‐income nations. The danger is greatest when one is in one's teens or twenties. Using current data, one of every 200 children born today will be murdered. One of 460 white girls and at the other extreme of one of every twenty‐seven nonwhite boys can expect such a fate. Murder is the leading cause of death among young African American men. Homicide is a well‐entrenched epidemic in the United States.
