Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagana's Workplaces to Clintona's Columbine and Beyond

by Mark Ames

Book Overview

Exploring the rage-murder phenomenon that has both plagued and baffled America for the last three decades, Going Postal offers provocative answers to the oft-asked question, Why?

American workers and children are rebelling violently all around us. By juxtaposing the historical place of rage in America with the social climate that has existed since the 1980s--when Reaganomics began to widen the gap between executive and average-worker...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932360824
• ISBN13: 9781932360820
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Soft Skull
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Original and provocative analysis

When you crack open a book entitled "Going Postal," you don't expect to start reading about the antebellum South. But Ames starts by transporting us back in time in service of his provocative theme - that today's rage murders in workplaces and schools are contemporary forms of slave rebellion, indeed the only possible form of rebellion in a society as decollectivized and militarized as the modern corporate United States. In this highly original and intriguing analysis, Ames ridicules "copycat" pundits who myopically search everywhere but right in front of their faces to explain the wave of workplace and schoolyard shootings that has swept through the United States over the last couple of decades. Hollywood movies, video games, the National Rifle Association, mental illness, bad parenting - the list of potential culprits is endless. But never the "toxic culture" of the institutions that breed these doomed revolts. Whereas initial news accounts often vilify shooters as almost cartoon cutouts - mentally imbalanced, trench-coated racists or kooks - Ames offers in-depth portrayals, so we come to know them as ordinary human beings oppressed and stressed to the breaking point by a ruthless corporate or school environment. Attempts to profile individual offenders fall flat, Ames argues, because the offenders are potentially anyone. As evidence, he catalogs the widespread sympathy for many of the shooters among their former coworkers and classmates. One would never see such sympathy among victims of serial sex murderers, he points out. Instead of profiling the individual rebels, Ames profiles the institutions. Shootings, he argues, happen in corporate environments rife with alienation, surveillance, mandatory unpaid overtime, and humiliating and degrading layoff rituals, where managers consciously harness fear to increase worker stress and insecurity. Sites of school shootings, meanwhile, are brutal environments where students undergo horrific torment only exacerbated by Zero Tolerance crackdowns. This book is meticulously researched and brilliantly argued. It's too bad that Ames couldn't find a better publisher, because the technical quality is extremely poor and the copy editor must have been on an extended coffee break. I understand that his first publisher bailed after 9/11. But the typos, overly small text, and poor binding are all minor, superficial flaws that should not stop you from buying and reading this fascinating book. PS: Coincidentally, and unbeknownst to me at the time, the latest rampage was underway, at Northern Illinois University. Although some other shooters have left written explanations or made posthoc statements (all included in Ames' book), this case is unusual in that killer Steven Kazmierczak co-authored a scholarly journal whose prophetic thesis almost exactly parallels Ames'. [...].

Former federal employee concurs

Mark Ames must have had some hardened life. He gets it right on the money when he describes the institutional torment that leads to destructive behavior. In the end, when the institution takes everything including truth, compassion and dignity, the rational response is rage, murder and rebellion. This is a well-researched book, put out by someone who spent a lot of time researching and documenting the pattern. Ames' unlikely connection between slavery and the working man is made convincingly, with slavery occasionally being the more humane of the two. I left government service recently, after watching three supervisors fall prey to love-hate dependency-based work relationships. All of them eventually succumbed to rage. I spent time speaking with other office employees, both former and current, who lost their emotional balance and faded into oblivion, whether fired or effectively incapacitated. I had to read this book to understand the dynamics behind this less-than-rare phenomenon. Ames' validation is a double-edged sword. What is frightening is the notion that this oppression occurs frequently, but is never documented until someone commits mass murder. Ames notes in his book that rebellion occurs with great infrequency, as the unknown is always more frightening than the known, however unpleasant. "Going Postal" is a must-read book, although it is less gory than it is reflective. Ames is an excellent historian and consolidator of relationship dynamics. His ability to interview his subjects and pick up on the details -- sometimes even humorous in a macabre way -- makes this a facinating documentary.

Amazing!

Going Postal is the most important book of the 21st century. Out of everything I have read about workplace and school shootings, I think Mark Ames finally gets it right. Unfortunately, no mainstream press dared to pick this up, but I think the book will change the minds of anyone who happens to read it. I definately will recommend this book to everyone.

This book is nothing less than revolutionary

Many thanks to Mark Ames for writing this book. I now realize that I'm not crazy - the system is.

Going Postal is required reading

If you weren't in one of the popular cliques in high school (i.e. 90 percent of us), if you've ever worked in a flourescent-lit nest of cubicles for idiot overseers (i.e. a typical office environment) you will read 'Going Postal' and nod, and read and nod, and as you read further, you will get more and more fired up. But fired up enough to do something, to actually go postal? Well, according to Ames, that depends on your mental health. 'Normal' folks just smile and suck it up, letting it build up and eat out their insides, and in this way make it through yet another soul-crushing day. If you're one of the normal folks, then this book is for you. If you're thinking of going postal, well... this book might just push you over the edge. You'd better stick to your John Grishams and Suze Ormans. Ames is able to write about something so basic to our existence (the school and office ARE the settings of our lives, he rightly points out) because he has earned perspective: He's a SoCal native (not coincidentally, the coastal 'paradise' where many US rage murders are concentrated) who has worked for years as a journalist in Russia. This perspective helped him notice things so elementary and important that we Americans take them for granted, and hence, ignore their significance. Even two decades and dozens of rage murders haven't shaken us out of our zombie-like stupor. It takes somebody like Ames -- one of us, but then, not really one of us -- to pull back the curtain and reveal how cruel, petty, and spiritually debilitating our lives in America are. And it doesn't have to be this way. This state of affairs was not inevitable. Most of us are better than this; it's the priveleged bullies who have convinced us that the way we live --and let's face it, it sucks -- is the only alternative. This mass deception, this spiritual heist, was what got me so fired up as I read this. The majority of us don't even know what's in our best interests anymore. My thanks to Mark Ames for writing an extremely timely and powerful book. This is required reading for all the stressed out, overworked, bullied, and fed up Americans, and for all foreigners who seek to understand just why, in some sense, America is the way it is. You may think you know; you may not want to know; but you NEED to know the truth. I can't say enough, except: Buy this book.