Robert talks to David Courtwright, the author of the book Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City. Courtwright argues that young single men are the group most likely to commit violent acts and communities with a high ration of young single men have a violence rate that is much higher than the norm. In some frontier communities where mining and ranching were the main economic engines, there was a very high gender ratio... sometimes forty men for every woman...and as a result, also a very high violence rate.
Copyright 1996 NPR
