"The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year.What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.
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This book was very interestingly written, telling the story from many angles to achieve as complete a picture as possible. At the time of Columbine, there were issues with the media reporting incorrect information and later there were police cover-ups, and I felt that these topics were not glossed over nor blown out of proportion, which I liked.
I really appreciated the progression of the book, doing some jumping around in time to reveal both what led to the event and the fallout/aftermath. This arrangement allowed the pieces to come together over the whole story-line, not just a lot of 'pre' and 'post' bracketing NBK. I felt that this helped pace the book and provided times to reflect and times of anxiety and buildup.
Well researched, I thought it was very thorough and respectful.
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