BookBrowse Reviews Kent State by Brian VanDeMark

On May 4th, 1970, four Kent State University students were shot and killed and nine wounded by members of the Ohio National Guard during a campus standoff. In Brian VanDeMark's stunning new study, Kent State: An American Tragedy, this "spasm of violence" receives a long overdue analysis essential to grappling with the incident's impact on America's psyche.

VanDeMark outlines early on why he felt this book was necessary: the Kent State shootings created "two competing narratives" that vilified either the student Vietnam War protesters or the Ohio National Guard for the tragedy that unfolded that day in northeast Ohio. VanDeMark sets out to tell the story from multiple perspectives, "without taking sides," using previously untapped archival documents and interviews with those who were there. The result is a cogent, clear-eyed, and almost minute-to-minute account of the chaos that ...