The reading list of Luigi Mangione, suspect in the murder of Brian Thompson

When the identity about the person who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was a mystery, Americans grafted their own ideas about the gunman onto the little information available. Now that a person of interest in the case has been arrested, that imagined character stumbles upon the identity and writings of a named suspect who appears to have left an extensive trail of book reviews, including an anti-technology manifesto written by the Unabomber and treatises on back pain management.

Along with a three-page, handwritten manifesto allegedly in Luigi Mangione’s possession at the time of his arrest, those online traces could offer insight into the motives of a man accused of a murder that struck a nerve with Americans exhausted by profit-hungry healthcare companies. .

Much of the online discussion has focused on the book written by Ted Kaczynski, the man known as the Unabomber, who led a nearly 20-year campaign of mail bombing aimed at reversing society’s accelerating technological revolution.

“You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”

“You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution,” wrote an account bearing Mangione’s name and likeness on Goodreads in a review of Kaczynski’s essay in 1995 “Industrial Society and It. Future.” “Fossil fuel companies are actively suppressing everything in their path, and in a generation or two it will begin to cost human lives at ever-increasing magnitudes until the Earth is just a ball in the flames orbiting a third of the Sun.Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest is not possible under the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such of destruction is justified as self-defense.”

The book’s anarchist-inflected interpretation of modern society has mocked leftists and recently found a second life on TikTok among people who reject the traditional left-right divide. In 2021, The Baffler described Kaczynski as an “unlikely unifying figure, embraced on TikTok by jaded environmentalists and justice nihilists alike.”

Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson they also cited Kaczynski. “He may not be wrong,” Musk said of Kaczynski’s insistence that the technology was bad for society.

Other books that caught Mangione’s interest included a mix of self-help bestsellers, pop psychology analyzes and self-optimization tomes such as Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek.

One of Mangione’s favorite books, judging by his glowing review, was a diagnostic called “What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies” by blogger Tim Urban. The author said in the book’s description that he eschews “the usual horizontal left-center-right political axis” in favor of “a vertical axis that explores how we think, as individuals and as groups.”

“I believe this book will go down in history as one of the most important philosophical texts of the early 21st century,” Mangione wrote.

Urban took to Twitter Monday afternoon with a comment he apparently pointed to Mangione’s appreciation of his writing: “It’s very much not the point of the book.”

While Kaczynski’s book provides an obvious possible influence for political violence, other books in Mangione’s reading history also stand out given its alleged target.

They included at least three volumes on pain management: “Becoming a Lean Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Addressing Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance,” “Crooked: Beating the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery,” and “Back Mechanic “.

A Twitter account bearing Mangione’s name posted an X-ray of his back with a surgically implanted medical device.

Details began to emerge Monday about a manifesto Mangione allegedly had on his person when he was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

“These vermin have come,” read one line in the document, according to a police official who spoke to CNN. “I apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”

New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said the NYPD did not yet have the full three-page document, but that it appeared to betray “some ill will toward corporate America.”