Name: Columbine
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)
Author: Dave Cullen

About this book

Summary

Book Summary

On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence, irrevocable branding every subsequent shooting "another Columbine."

When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window, the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to the prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal.

The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boys' tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.

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Media Reviews

"Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill, even if the answers aren't easy to stomach." - Publishers Weekly.

"Cullen clarifies a lot of misconceptions that evolved soon after the tragedy and provides new insights into why it occurred, which makes the book definitely worth reading despite the disjointed narrative." - Library Journal.

"Poignant sections devoted to the survivors probe the myriad ways that individuals cope with grief and struggle to interpret and make sense of tragedy ... Carefully researched and chilling, if somewhat overwritten." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Columbine was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own review

Cathryn Conroy

This Should Be Required Reading for Everyone
Breaking news! Oh, it's just another school shooting. How sad we can even think like that.

The notion that a child could procure guns and make bombs to take down his high school took on a whole new meaning when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did the unthinkable at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. And all these years later you may think (yawning) that this is old news. It's not.

Journalist and author Dave Cullen took 10 years to prodigiously research and write this compelling and gripping book, interviewing the parents of those who died, the injured, the survivors and so many more. He scoured thousands and thousands of pages of documents published in the official government, police and coroner's reports, as well as laboratory evidence from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He read Eric and Dylan's personal journals.

The book's detail is incredible and at times excruciating, such as the stomach-churning fact of how many gallons of blood were spilled in the Columbine High School library. Cullen not only superbly clarifies what is already known about this horrific act, but also shatters the many outrageously false myths that most of us take to be absolute fact. (Exhibit A: Eric and Dylan were NOT bullied.) But this is not a mere recitation of facts. Cullen also offers heartbreaking answers to that most difficult question of all: Why?

Cullen's prose is so engaging, the story so riveting and the pacing so perfect that "Columbine" reads like a page-turning novel. Never mind that you already know the ending, you will still want to keep reading past your bedtime.

Most important of all, reading this remarkable book changed how I think about the perpetrators of such heinous crimes and how we as bystanders—parents, friends, teachers and neighbors—can spot and help a little kid who is already displaying disturbing signs of depression or even psychopathy long before they get to middle school.

In this tragic age of Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland, this book should be required reading for everyone.

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