🔗 Share this article Mangione: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Sympathy for a Devil? On December 5, 2024, a leading publication published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was truly chilling and disturbing. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One comment read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to increase earnings on your health.” Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too. The Making of a Subject A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame his subject in symbolic roles. Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘everything is accelerating whether we like it or not’ The Meaning Behind the Crime As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both. Missing Pieces Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits rose significantly. Ambiguous Findings By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.” One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.