Book Review: Columbine

On April 20th 1999, my childhood changed. I remember coming home from school and seeing a young man, Patrick Ireland, being helped out of a window. His body wasn't moving in a fluid motion. It seemed as though he were taking his time while hundreds of others fled from the school. It wasn't until later that I found out that he had been shot in the head. I couldn't understand it at the time. I kept thinking to myself, why wasn't he attempting to get out of there faster? My brain kept trying to grapple with this idea that something of that magnitude could happen on a high school campus. They were too young. We were too young. What could bring someone do this?

There were no clean-cut answers, there will never be. However, everywhere America turned, there were answers. The myths that we cling to so fervently began to materialize in the days after the disaster, e.g: The Trench Coat Mafia, that the shooters were outcasts, that they were targeting their oppressors, that heavy music and cinema influenced their decisions. These myths became fact in the American psyche. It was truncated, shaped, and fit into a box that people (myself included) could understand. This allowed Americans to go forward with their lives and look at themselves in the mirror knowing that events like Columbine were merely freak accidents. Compartmentalizing tragedy may help to cope with the unexplainable, but it doesn't serve to illuminate truth.

Dave Cullen's book Columbine is an important step in attempting to reclaim the truth. Thoroughly researched and meticulously written, Cullen's book is breathtaking and focuses not only those young men who killed twelve of their fellow classmates that day, but also everyone who was in some way affected by their decisions. Cullen himself had taken part in the subsequent media bonanza that the massacre brought to the town and used the next ten years culling sources. By judiciously using the killers personal journals and interviews with the victims and their families, Cullen dispels commonly held myths and is able to make some sense out of this seemingly wanton calamity. This was not a fluke or a battle of good vs. evil. It was a matter of two kids who made a momentous decision, a town that was caught in the aftermath, and a nation in mourning.

I cannot express how important this book is. It is expertly written and delicately handles a topic that is so quick to conjure an emotional response. It does not seek to blame, but understand. Which is something that is rarely attempted in these types of situations.

It is simply one of the best non-fiction books I have read and I am glad that someone gave the massacre at Columbine a comprehensive and fair treatment.

I give this book 4 out of 4 dead horses!