“Treating Violence: An Emergency Room Doctor Takes On a Deadly American Epidemic” by Rob Gore, MD

c.2024, Beacon Press $27.95 200 pages Well, thank you so much to your co-worker. That’s where you got this ick, this scratchy-throat, achy-body, upset-stomach, can’t-sleep virus. He sneezed and that’s all it took. Now you’ve got what he had and you’re trying not to spread it anymore. As you know, and as in the new book “Treating Violence” by Rob Gore, MD, an epidemic affects everybody. Once upon a time, Rob Gore had a brother. Angel wasn’t biologically related but within a short time after Gore’s parents fostered the young boy, Gore considered Angel as a sibling. They tussled and played together. Gore watched over his “brother” and when Angel got older, he did the same for Gore. But Angel was anything but an angel and slowly, he turned to hustling drugs. Gore says he wishes he’d done more to stop him. Eventually, Angel went to prison. Growing up in Brooklyn, Gore knew that the streets were not kind to people who looked like him, people with brown or Black skin, and he understood early how privileged he was. He was granted — and sometimes squandered — the best education. In high school, after he was given a chance to...