A review by bookish_brain1
Columbine by Dave Cullen

5.0

I read this book thinking about Uvalde, and what strikes me most is how little we have learned between 1999 and 2022. What I learned is that what I thought I understood about Columbine, I actually had no clue. Dave Cullen does an incredible job of writing this book with heart and compassion. Compassion for the victims, compassion for the parents of Eric and Dylan, compassion for law enforcement, and compassion for the survivors. Everything I thought was true was in fact false or exaggerated or misunderstood. The pastor that offered solace for Dylan's parents and helped them quietly bury him lost his job for his efforts. This book sits in the pain and anguish, it looks for answers, it asks questions, it deals with really hard things. It was shocking to see the mistakes made in Columbine made in Uvalde. We want to make these shootings about one thing, but it is so much more complicated. Dylan and Eric planned this attack for over 2 years, and not in secret, but out in the open. One of the victims lay out on the sidewalk next to the school for over 28 hours, in the elements. A teacher bled to death, slowly, over hours. Both bad and hard choices were made by law enforcement. Things were hidden, lied about, covered up. Eric wrote a story which he turned in for a grade about how it was just as easy to buy guns and bring them into a school as it was to come armed with a calculator. There were written diaries, video diaries, websites detailing the thoughts and plans of Eric and Dylan. Dave Cullen wrestles with the why. Eric's motivation is clear, he tells us over and over. He was a psychopath, a narcissist, a sadist. He wanted to hurt the people he looked down upon, which was all humanity. Dylan is harder. He might have been helped, but it's hard to know for sure. What is very clear is that Columbine marked a period in time when terrorism and mass shootings collided. Eric and Dylan started the "spectacle murder". Eric wanted annihilation, a school catastrophe similar to the OKC bombing. The performance was the point. There was no cause, just a demonstration of personal power. Spectacle murder is all about the exposure. Media feeds this particular evil and we need to change how we think about mass shootings in schools and how we talk about it. It is a really well written, and well researched book. Not an easy book by any metric, but a very important one I think. My advice is read a little each day, this is not a book to rush through quickly, and practice self-care while you read through it.