Excerpt from Kent State by Brian VanDeMark, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The Kent State shooting gave rise to two competing narratives that oversimplified the motives and characters of the people involved, lacked nuance, and ignored ambiguity, complexity, unpredictability, confusion, chaos, and cruel pathos. One narrative depicted the shooting as lethal violence in the name of the state directed against those who sought to defy its writ. The other narrative depicted the shooting as law enforcement giving troublemakers the comeuppance they deserved. For more than fifty years, little to no middle ground has existed between these competing narratives. Opinions remain as sharply drawn as ever. Most Americans, when they look at Kent State, have not allowed themselves to understand the opposing viewpoint or to accept shared responsibility.

Because of these competing narratives and because of incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence, the full story of the Kent State shooting has remained elusive. But now the time has come to move beyond the partisanship of competing narratives. This means telling the story of the fatal encounter between Vietnam War protestors and the National Guard at Kent State through multiple perspectives, critically and with understanding, but without taking sides. It means searching out and piecing together the story in all its intimate, vivid, and painful detail from previously published accounts, untapped archival documents, and original interviews with participants. Only then can one grasp the full dimensions of this great American tragedy and, perhaps, help to heal the wounds it inflicted.

Reprinted from Kent State: An American Tragedy by Brian VanDeMark. Copyright © 2024 by Brian VanDeMark. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.