A review by kellylittlehansen
Parkland: Birth of a Movement by Dave Cullen

5.0

After reading Columbine I knew that I wanted to read Parkland. Dave Cullen is an empathetic, thoughtful, and well written journalist and I enjoy his work despite the subject matter. Parkland originally came off hold a few days after the Uvalde shooting and so I had to delay my reading since I was already crying every day and lived in a near constant state of rage. While Cullen spent 10 years in Columbine post-shooting detailing the event, shooters, victims, survivors, studies, and healing process, Parkland does something similar but is wildly different. In Parkland the majority of the book is devoted to the birth of the March for our Lives movement, it’s founders, and the revolutionary hours, days, months and years since it’s inception. It’s heartbreaking both for the massacre and the complete lack of action by the government (thus forcing literal children who stepped over the bodies of their peers to create the change the House/Senate/President is too cowardly to do themselves). But it’s also hopeful, inspiring, and moving. It’s rare that a book can make you cry both out of grief and hope, but Parkland did it.