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A review by kellymcgatha
Columbine by Dave Cullen
5.0
Everyone should read this book. It is amazing. Everything I thought I knew about Columbine turned out to be completely wrong--especially Eric and Dylan. They weren't anything like I imagined. And who knew that it wasn't even supposed to be a school shooting but a bombing that would have killed more people than the Oklahoma city bombing?
I was hesitant to read this when it first came out. I didn't want to hear about the stories anymore. At the time the massacre happened, I was thirteen and living in the Ohio suburbs. The next five years of my schooling were tainted with bomb threats and occasional school evacuations (one of which I remember standing out in the rain without a coat and finally being allowed to take cover in a church). One bomb threat in particular, not long after Columbine, was so big that I think half of my class called in sick. Lock down drills were much more common than tornado drills. Bomb threats were almost always followed by security lines and bag searches just to get into school the next day. Cops always patrolled the lunch periods. And, of course, the words "I'll kill you," written or spoken, always lead to suspension, even expulsion. But now, having read the book, I realize that everything my fellow classmates and I believed about the "typical" school shooter is completely false. Every story we used to talk about after lock down drills was nothing more than a rumor. I wish something like this would have come out when I was still in high school--it would have been amazing to talk about with teachers. I especially encourage anyone who experienced the above in high school to read this book. It is one of the best pieces of non-fiction I have ever read.
I was hesitant to read this when it first came out. I didn't want to hear about the stories anymore. At the time the massacre happened, I was thirteen and living in the Ohio suburbs. The next five years of my schooling were tainted with bomb threats and occasional school evacuations (one of which I remember standing out in the rain without a coat and finally being allowed to take cover in a church). One bomb threat in particular, not long after Columbine, was so big that I think half of my class called in sick. Lock down drills were much more common than tornado drills. Bomb threats were almost always followed by security lines and bag searches just to get into school the next day. Cops always patrolled the lunch periods. And, of course, the words "I'll kill you," written or spoken, always lead to suspension, even expulsion. But now, having read the book, I realize that everything my fellow classmates and I believed about the "typical" school shooter is completely false. Every story we used to talk about after lock down drills was nothing more than a rumor. I wish something like this would have come out when I was still in high school--it would have been amazing to talk about with teachers. I especially encourage anyone who experienced the above in high school to read this book. It is one of the best pieces of non-fiction I have ever read.