[1][3] Cook joined the Duke faculty as an assistant professor in 1973, shortly after the establishment of the university's Sanford Institute of Public Policy.
[4] Cook is an honorary fellow of the American Society of Criminology and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
The book applies a framework for valuing "irreplaceable commodities" which Cook developed earlier in his career to calculate a holistic figure of 80 billion dollars for the total cost of gun violence in the United States in a recent year.
He co-authored the book Policing Gun Violence: Strategic Reforms for Controlling Our Most Pressing Crime Problem with Anthony Braga, published in 2023.
They see the system of extremely well-paid "superstars", which previously existed only in areas like sports and entertainment, being replicated in other economic sectors.
They further warn that this trend has the risk of leading to a misallocation of human capital by diverting too many talented individuals – who overestimate their likelihood of success – to "winner-take-all markets" at the expense of other career opportunities.