Goodreads blurb: “In over a year of on-the-ground reportage, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery travelled across the US to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America32946293 today.

In an effort to grasp the scale of the response to Michael Brown’s death and understand the magnitude of the problem police violence represents, Lowery conducted hundreds of interviews with the families of victims of police brutality, as well as with local activists working to stop it. Lowery investigates the cumulative effect of decades of racially biased policing in segregated neighborhoods with constant discrimination, failing schools, crumbling infrastructure and too few jobs.

Offering a historically informed look at the standoff between the police and those they are sworn to protect, They Can’t Kill Us All demonstrates that civil unrest is just one tool of resistance in the broader struggle for justice. And at the end of President Obama’s tenure, it grapples with a worrying and largely unexamined aspect of his legacy: the failure to deliver tangible security and opportunity to the marginalised Americans most in need of it.”

My Review

This was a distressing book to read, making me gasp in shock and horror as time after time the author wrote about the young black men gunned down by the police in America. I live in the UK and the only time I’ve seen armed police is at airports or outside Buckingham Palace. I can’t believe that the officers who killed these black men haven’t been brought to account because it’s not considered a crime by the police unions! I despair that in the 21st century movements like Black Lives Matter still have to be formed because of the blatant racism that continues in this so called ‘civilised world’!

I encourage anyone who is interested in social justice, civil rights and equality for all, to read this.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books (UK) for my digital copy in exchange for a review.

They Can’t Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery is published by Penguin on 26 January 2017.