2.95k reviews for:

Columbine

Dave Cullen

4.32 AVERAGE


3,75
challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

i loved learning more about this case but tbh this book was probably 4hrs too long. 
dark informative reflective sad medium-paced
challenging dark medium-paced

Truly an in-depth accounting of what really happened and accurate portrayals of the killers. Well worth the read.

Really comprehensive and good reporting on the Columbine school shooting. Cullen balances all perspectives well such that we are able to thoroughly understand what had happened with all that were involved in the massacre — the victims’ families and survivors, the authorities and the investigation, and then the killers themselves. The descriptions of what happened in the school on the fateful day are brutal and difficult to read. I shuddered at the details.

I also appreciated that Cullen turns the lens back at the media as well. He asks questions about how good reporting should be conducted on mass shootings like Columbine, where, as he espouses later, it is clear that the killers desired the media coverage and the carnage was a big performance. It calls on journalists and media outlets to be more discerning and responsible about how tragedies like Columbine presented to the public. In that way, it is also an indictment of how some outlets had milked the tragedy for the eyeballs or rushed to break news without considering whether things are factual or not.

I admire the bravery and courage of the survivors of the shooting. Often while reading I tried to imagine what I would have done had I been in the library where the bulk of the killings happen — completely unimaginable. To know that some of them were able to recover (both physically and psychologically) and live fulfilling lives gives a semblance of a happy ending to an awful event. I’m glad Cullen ended the book with that afterword on forgiveness from the survivors’ perspective.
challenging dark informative fast-paced

fuck. what an incredible book. but i am just so so angry at like, everyone who failed here. all over the place, just incompetence. also , fucking cops , just failures,
challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced
challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced