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| Book #2 of 2010 |
| Title: Columbine |
| Author: Dave Cullen |
| Publisher: Twelve |
| Pub Date: April 6, 2009 |
| Grade: A |
Comments:
Columbine is Dave Cullen’s recreation of what happened at the devastating Columbine school shooting in 1999. I was a high school junior when Columbine happened and can remember how much of an effect it had on life thousands of miles away. We had a few bomb scares when I was in high school, but fortunately they were all jokes and not something credible. There was also a rumor of a “list” of students who were the type of people who would do something like this in the principal’s office (which I believed then, but don’t believe now), a friend of mine was sent home for wearing one of those Hot Topic T-shirts that said “Don’t mess with me, I’m running out of places to hide the bodies,” and a guy friend was told he wasn’t allowed to wear nail polish (which was retracted when his mother called the school to say he would stop wearing nail polish the day every girl in the school stopped).
Cullen recreates the killings and provides a background from the killers’ journals and other notes, plus interviews, police reports, and many other sources. This book illuminated for me just how much of what I thought about this event was completely wrong. I had no idea that they intended to blow up the entire school. Cullen downplays the bullying angle and in fact, portrays the killers as partipants in bullying rather than victims, but I suspect that played a role for them earlier in their lives, considering both were described as shy and awkward growing up. The writing in this book is compelling and I found myself drawn in to the point that I had trouble putting it down, despite how disturbing it was. I’ve read some criticisms of the book and I don’t think any one account is going to have the whole truth in it, but I’d encourage you to read this to find out more about this tragedy. |
| In Depth Reviews: A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy, Melniczenko Musings |
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Cullen , who first reported on the story for the online magazine Salon, acknowledges in the book’s source notes that thoughts he attributes to Klebold and Harris are conjecture gleaned from the record the pair left behind.
Jeff Kass takes a more straightforward approach in “Columbine: A True Crime Story,” working backward from the events of the fateful day.
The Denver Post
Mr. Cullen insists that the killers enjoyed “far more friends than the average adolescent,” with Harris in particular being a regular Casanova who “on the ultimate high school scorecard . . . outscored much of the football team.” The author’s footnotes do not reveal how he knows this; when I asked him about it while preparing this review, Mr. Cullen said he did not necessarily mean to imply that Harris was sexually active. But what else would such words mean?
“Eric and Dylan never had any girlfriends,” the more sober Mr. Kass writes, and were “probably virgins upon death.”
Wall Street Journal
Thanks for that really kind review of my book, Keri. It’s great to get that perspective of someone in high school at the time. I can barely even imagine what that was like.
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