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jenmangler's review against another edition
4.0
Everybody thinks they know the facts of the April 1999 Columbine school shooting. This book really challenges that assumption. Writing about one news report written 48 hours after the massacre, Cullen says, "The details were accurate, the conclusions wrong. Most of the media followed. It was accepted as fact." Powerful food for thought. Cullen writes powerfully & beautifully and helps to shed light not only on the events of that day but on the implications of the event. This is a marvelous and important book and I highly recommend it.
abicaro17's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.25
Wow. I mean a book about the Columbine High School shooting isn't going to be easy to read AT ALL but, this book is an amazingly interesting and informative collection of the facts and events of April 20th, 1999. The author both recounts events from eyewitness, police reports, and security footage. The book complies the psychological states of both Eric and Dylan, the effects on parents, students, and locals, and the global response following the events. As someone who was given the Rachel Scott presentation in middle school, I feel like misinformation on this event spreads even to this day. I was told that Eric and Dylan were loners who hated jocks and popular kids. They were infact psychopaths (or at least Eric was) who planned to blow up the school and didn't have a list at all. The whole book is so interesting and godawful its hard to like or dislike it. The rating is based solely on the slurs (which I assume are quotations but that's not always clear) and the actual nature of school shootings being a traumatic subject (specifically talk about VA Tech shooting).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Racism, Suicide attempt, Violence, Child death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Toxic friendship, Homophobia, Murder, Suicide, Body horror, Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Gore, Antisemitism, Gun violence, Medical content, and Religious bigotry
alexisswatsonn's review against another edition
5.0
Wow this book!
After a prof recommended this book while I took an advanced crim course I had an interest to read it. This book is definitely difficult to get through with the content and focusing on a heavy topic, understandably. I found the amount of detail and topics focused on really interesting and it described various perceptions at different stages of the Columbine event. The author was one of the first journalists to be given interviews, access to documents and he spent 10 years writing this book which is phenomenal when you think about how much he went through to write it in such an insightful way. He excluded himself from the book almost completely so some of the interactions he describes are actually of himself but you don’t realize that until reading through the end notes. I really appreciated this tactic because it made the book read as more of an account for he event as it was intended rather than a bunch of interviews.
Highly recommend if you’re looking for a sociological, psychological account of an event that puzzled many for years and still leaves big remaining questions that will never be answered. I could honestly read this five more times and still pick up more information than the time before.
**side note: this is one of the first editions of the book but the newest 25th anniversary edition focuses more on the lasting societal impact since he published back in 2009**
After a prof recommended this book while I took an advanced crim course I had an interest to read it. This book is definitely difficult to get through with the content and focusing on a heavy topic, understandably. I found the amount of detail and topics focused on really interesting and it described various perceptions at different stages of the Columbine event. The author was one of the first journalists to be given interviews, access to documents and he spent 10 years writing this book which is phenomenal when you think about how much he went through to write it in such an insightful way. He excluded himself from the book almost completely so some of the interactions he describes are actually of himself but you don’t realize that until reading through the end notes. I really appreciated this tactic because it made the book read as more of an account for he event as it was intended rather than a bunch of interviews.
Highly recommend if you’re looking for a sociological, psychological account of an event that puzzled many for years and still leaves big remaining questions that will never be answered. I could honestly read this five more times and still pick up more information than the time before.
**side note: this is one of the first editions of the book but the newest 25th anniversary edition focuses more on the lasting societal impact since he published back in 2009**
mariahmt's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
rainjrop's review against another edition
5.0
Gripping, horrifying, heartbreaking. I learned so much and discovered that the little I thought I knew was nothing but regurgitated, cemented rumors perpetuated by the media and popular culture over the last two decades. Columbine changed school shootings forever and we continue to see the reverberations today. It's an excellently researched and cited account from a journalist who was there and continued to immerse himself in the aftermath over the following decade.
zivi's review against another edition
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
3.5
The book was very insightful but so unnecessarily long, it could have been shorter by a third and still deliver the same message.
emileers's review against another edition
5.0
One of the most intense books I've ever read. I was worried it would be boring because I usually don't like nonfiction very much, but at times I couldn't put it down. Still hard to read because of the subject matter, though.