Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Enter the Babylon System : Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent - Christian Pearce
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Enter the Babylon System

Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent

By: Christian Pearce, Rodrigo Bascunan

Paperback | 20 November 2007

At a Glance

Paperback


$37.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.44 with

 or 

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

A docu-style investigation of our fascination with the gun, from the perspective of the hip-hop generation.

The 2003 shooting death of Toronto community-centre worker Kempton Howard put the spotlight on hip hop’s fixation with guns. Media and police soon blamed rap music and its tales of gang life on bullet-ridden US streets for the rising use of firearms in Canadian crime. Were these songs artful accounts of a terrible truth, or a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Rodrigo Bascunan and Christian Pearce have interviewed many of the major players in the hip-hop world. As publishers of an award-winning magazine of urban culture, they’d watched rap music become a scapegoat for society’s much older and widely spread fascination with guns. What follows is their international adventure to deconstruct modern gun culture in all its manifestations. Bascunan and Pearce seek out hip-hop artists, illegal gun runners, firearms aficionados and manufacturers, museum curators, academics, politicians, video-game creators, activists, victims of gun violence and the family and friends left behind.

Somewhere between Fast Food Nation, No Logo and a Michael Moore documentary, featuring sly sidebar material and original artwork, Enter the Babylon System is part outrageous journalistic pursuit and part passionate cri de coeur for sanity in the face of a society’s obsession.
Industry Reviews
"Fascinating. . . . unlike any other book recently published, because the two young Canadians do not seek to whitewash the harmful side-effects of the culture they write about."
--"National Post"

"Passionate and illuminating. . . . Bascunan and Pearce, adamant believers in hip-hop's positive 'political and cultural voice, ' are also honest and sincere reporters."
--Macleans.ca

"Bascunan and Pearce have used their industry credentials to gain access to some of the major players in the multi-billion-dollar hip-hop industry and in the multi-billion-dollar gun industry. . . . They give us the Canadian angle without losing the scope of the broader global issues at hand."
--"The Gazette" (Montreal)

More in Rap & Hip-Hop

Only God Can Judge Me : The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur - Jeff Pearlman
Grime : Documenting the scene's rise and reign - Roony Keefe

RRP $59.99

$45.75

24%
OFF
You Only Live Once : The Little Guide to Drake - OH
Beastie Boys Book - Michael Diamond

RRP $79.99

$55.75

30%
OFF
F*ck, That's Delicious : An Annotated Guide to Eating Well - Action Bronson
The Way I Am - Eminem

Paperback

$52.75

Will : The Sunday Times Bestselling Autobiography - Will Smith, Mark Manson

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Rose That Grew from Concrete - Tupac Shakur

RRP $29.99

$24.99

17%
OFF
Contact High : A Visual History of Hip-Hop - Vikki Tobak

RRP $95.00

$63.75

33%
OFF
Tupac Shakur : The Authorized Biography - Staci Robinson

RRP $59.99

$45.75

24%
OFF
Tupac Shakur : The Authorized Biography - Staci Robinson

RRP $27.99

$22.75

19%
OFF
The Rock History Reader : 3rd Edition - Theo Cateforis

RRP $126.00

$94.75

25%
OFF
Remember the Times : A Memoir - Teddy Riley
Spit : A Life in Battles - Jonnie Park

RRP $54.99

$54.75

SOUND OF SILENCE - Anthony Ghnassia

RRP $110.00

$84.75

23%
OFF
The Story of Rap - Little Tiger

$15.75