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Tommy
The fascinating and topical nonfiction story of how one gun changed American courtrooms, streets, and homes, told for a YA audience by award-winning author Karen Blumenthal
John Taliaferro Thompson had a mission: to develop a lightweight, fast-firing weapon that would help Americans win on the battlefield. His Thompson submachine gun could deliver a hundred bullets in a matter of secondsābut didn't find a market in the U.S. military. Instead, the Tommy gun became the weapon of choice for a generation of bootleggers and bank-robbing outlaws, and became a deadly American icon. Following a bloody decadeāand eighty years before the mass shootings of our own timeāCongress moved to take this weapon off the streets, igniting a national debate about gun control.
Critically-acclaimed author Karen Blumenthal, author ofĀ Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition, Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Woman Living History,Ā andĀ Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929, reveals the fascinating story of this famous and deadly weaponāof the lives it changed, the debate it sparked, and the unprecedented response it inspired inĀ Tommy: The Gun That Changed America.
Praise for Tommy: The Gun that Changed America:
āThe Thompson rapid-firing submachine gun is the crux of Blumenthalās accessible social history, which encompasses military weaponry, gangster warfare, and gun-control legislation. . . . Engrossing and grisly.ā āPublishers Weekly, starred review
āBlumenthalās fascinating biography of the weapon is most dramatic in its chapters on the famous gangsters. . . . A gripping look at guns, gangsters, and finding the āright balance between individual freedoms and community safety.'ā āKirkus Reviews, starred review
Karen BlumenthalĀ is a long-time journalist who has written for both adults and young people. She previously wrote about the 1920s inĀ Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929,Ā which was a Sibert Honor Book; about social change inĀ Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, which won a Jane Addams Children's Book Award; and most recently the biographyĀ Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different. She lives in Dallas, Texas.