Customer Reviews

Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond

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Mr Ames, of the ex-pat alternative paper The Exile in Moscow, has been working on this strong book for years, and now that it's here, I don't know who'll want to read it. It's devastating. I felt a little dirty bringing my copy into work. My boss asked me what I was reading, I told him about it, and then said, "You'd better watch out," because I'm something of a loose cannon. He told me to shut up, and that was that.
Anyway, the book. What Mr Ames lacks in writing ability (not much, but his language is thick with judgmental adjectives that make the reading more arduous- maybe this was his intention?) he makes up for in original thought, and this book is a complex and original work. Revolutionary would not be too strong a word. He compares post office, workplace and school shootings to slave uprisings, and goes far into his comparisons by quoting the language surrounding both rebellions. Where Columbine's murderers were motivated by base evil and video games, Nat Turner's slave army seemed to be motivated by base evil and the ingratitude and treachery of the negroes, in the media accounts of the time. Ames doesn't think these accounts cover for the hostile environments that precipitated the attacks, rather he believes that the problem was that slavery was ingrained in the value systems of Nat Turner's time, so much so that they couldn't see anything anyone would find objectional about it, in much the same way that we can't admit now that our culture has something to do with the recent epidemic of rage massacres. Can you believe?- 45 school shootings in the 2003-04 academic year alone.
It's an unwieldy topic, but Ames does a terrific job with it. One thing I would have liked to see would be a handling of the original march to unionization. I guess that at the time, the government didn't support companies killing their employees with low wages and unsafe conditions quite so much. Now, they do that stuff legally.

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'. [...].

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.

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.

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

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.

Read this book now. Read this book and pass it on. Don't just recommend the book to your family and friends. Buy it for them. Shove it in their faces and make them read it now. This book is not a book to add to your growing list of "Maybe I'll read this book some day when I have the time." Its message is urgent. Stop what you are doing and read this book.

I read this book in one sitting, because I found it so compelling.

Ames believes many of the "lone nut" school and workplace shootings that have exploded across America in the last 30 years are actually a form of "slave rebellion" against predatory, cruel, and self-dealing "leaders." When you look at the dehumanizing schools and brutal offices in which we spend most of our lives...well, I was sold by page 2.

If you need to think the world corporate America has constructed for the rest of us makes sense, can be a happy place, and is a system where true progress is possible...well, I have a subprime mortgage deal for you. The current financial debacle hadn't happened yet when this book was published, but sadly, these frauds make Ames' case for crumbling American safety, freedom, and dignity just that much stronger.

If you're ready to think about your daily life in an entirely new way that shows why so many things in American life no longer work for most of us...and why so few of us fight back effectively...you can't do better than this book.

I just got through reading Ames well-thought out book. It was pretty forthright, easy to read overall. This book lays out a strong indictment of Reaganomics and Reagan's de facto "declaration of war" on the Middle Class shortly after assuming office in 1981. This "declaration is/was a catylist for the culture of random violence and the lack of compassion and community we see in our society today. He lays out a timeline for
Reagan's busting up the PATCO union (air traffic controllers)when they struck in August of '81 as the "opening salvo" in 1) eventually rendering unions virtually irrelevant, 2) that same summer, signing in the first of the big tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and has led to huge government deficits and greatest maldistribution of wealth of any industrialized nation on the planet.
Ames esentially takes the opinion that George W. Bush has merely "finished the job" of this mal-distributing of wealth, gutting the middle class, ignoring the poor, and in turn negating the sense of hope for an economically secure life if even in a modest sense. This resulting resentment, helplessness, isolation and rage has been the main cause of so many rampage shootings from Post Offices in middle America to the Columbine shootings. Ames makes much more explicit in his book what Michael Moore implies in "Bowling for Columbine." It takes that movie's premise a step (or two) further.
The only "issues" I have with the book was 1)it being so topical in nature this book is kind of dated and could use either a new addition or at least an extended afterword treating events of post 2004, such as Katrina the last of the Bush years, along with the currenct economic meltdown. 2) an index and maybe a little less shooting stories (examples aplenty in it) and some more hard economic data to support his case (I know it's out there) but think it would reinforce his case that much more. To Ames credit, however there are extensive end-notes at the books' end. And the fact that the book is kind of "frozen in time" in mid-2004 should not detract one from reading this book. It places blame where blame is due. Tough to read at times because IS such an accurate "diagnosis" of the forces that have led to America's truly sad and sorry state...

This book, aside from being eloquntly written, urgent, and insightful, also will open your eye or confirm some things you've always felt. It should be required readiing for those who are interested in education reform and the state of our dying culture. If you arent interested in these things, it is still a great read and you are guaranteed to walk away having learnt something.