Author Talk with Senator Chris Murphy of The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy

Is America destined to always be a violent nation? This sweeping history by U.S. senator Chris Murphy explores the origins of our violent impulses, the roots of our obsession with firearms, and the mythologies that prevent us from confronting our national crisis.

Murphy tells the story of his profound personal transformation in the wake of the mass murder at Newtown, and his subsequent immersion in the complicated web of influences that drive American violence. Murphy comes to the conclusion that while America’s relationship to violence is indeed unique, America is not inescapably violent. Even as he details the reasons we’ve tolerated so much bloodshed for so long, he explains that we have the power to change. Murphy takes on the familiar arguments, obliterates the stale talking points, and charts the way to a fresh, less polarized conversation about violence and the weapons that enable it—a conversation we urgently need in order to transform the national dialogue and save lives. 

Senator Chris Murphy, the junior United States Senator for Connecticut, has dedicated his career to public service as an advocate for Connecticut families. Senator Murphy has been a strong voice in the Senate fighting for job creation, affordable health care, education, sensible gun laws, and a forward-looking foreign policy. As a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) Senator Murphy has worked to make college more affordable and ensure that our public education system works to serve all students. Senator Murphy also led a bipartisan effort to reform our mental health system, working across the aisle to craft the first comprehensive mental health bill in the Senate in decades. Senator Murphy has laid out a forward-thinking foreign policy vision for the United States. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he has been an outspoken proponent of diplomacy, international human rights and the need for clear-eyed American leadership abroad.

About your Facilitator: Mason B. Williams is assistant professor of Leadership Studies and Political Science at Williams College and the author of City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (W.W. Norton, 2013).

Mason B. Williams is assistant professor of Leadership Studies and Political Science at Williams College, where he teaches courses on political leadership, American political history, racial inequality in American cities, and the politics of historical memory. He is the author of City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (W.W. Norton, 2013), a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and the co-editor of two volumes of essays, Alan Brinkley: A Life in History (Columbia University Press, 2018) and Shaped By the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2019). His writing and commentary have appeared in outlets such as The Atlantic, the Berkshire Eagle, Dissent, the New Republic, New York magazine, the New York Daily News, the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, the Princeton Alumni Weekly, the Washington Post, and Williams Magazine.