"Columbine" by Dave Cullen
Finished: June 30, 2009 (the day it was due back at the library!)
Page Count: 432

Why I read it:
I have a weird thing about active shooters and school shootings. Lucky enough to never have witnessed one in my lifetime, I find a fascination in reading about them or watching TV shows that deal with school shootings (One Tree Hill, Degrassi, NCIS). When this book came out in the spring of this year, I immediately had an interest in it and desire to read it. At just over 400 pages, the book looked daunting when I picked it up from the library but I had a deadline of a month and managed to plow through.

Wikipedia Synopsis:
Columbine has two main stories, told in alternating chapters: the 'before' story of the killers' evolution toward murder, and the 'after' story of the survivors.

The 'before' story focuses primarily on the killers' high school years. According to the experts cited here, Eric Harris was a textbook psychopath, and Dylan Klebold was an angry depressive.

The 'after' chapters are composed of eight major substories, focused on indivuals who played a key role in the aftermath, including Principal Frank DeAngelis, alleged Christian martyr Cassie Bernall (another myth, according to the book), "the boy in the window" Patrick Ireland, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier, the families of victim Danny Rohrbough and heroic teacher Dave Sanders, who died saving students from the gunmen. The Evangelical Christian community's feverish response is also chronicled.

Columbine begins four days before the massacre, at a school assembly hosted by Principal DeAngelis just before Prom weekend. Scenes from the massacre are depicted graphically in the early chapters, and later through flashbacks.

The book is formally composed of five parts: "Part One: Female Down," "Part Two: After and Before," "Part Three: The Downward Spiral," "Part Four: Take Back the School," and "Part Five: Judgment Day." The book contains fifty-three chapters, a timeline, twenty-six pages of detailed endnotes and a fifteen-page bibliography organized into topics like, "Psychopathy," "Government Reports," "Lawsuits," "Christians," "Evidence," "Hostages and Terrorists," "Survivors," "Media Accounts," "Police Ethics and Response Protocols," etc.

What I thought:
Despite the fact that it was hard to read at times, due to the obviously rough material, I found this book hard to put down. Through 10 years of research, Dave Cullen seems to have found his way into the school on the day of the shooting at Columbine and basically described it to a T, as well as the months beforehand and the aftermath following the tragic shooting. I was amazed at how simply the material was laid out in this book and how much more it made sense after I read it. Even though school shootings scare the crap out of me, I found this book to be easy to read and incredibly interesting. I'm actually quite pleased that I was able to finish it. I felt a sense of relief when the book was over and almost a sense of closure for something I was so far away from.

Even though the topic is heavy and some of the chapters of this book are a little graphic, it is a truly interesting book and was put together very well. I definitely recommend it to anyone that remembers the Columbine shooting and just wants to understand more and learn the truth about what happened and as close to the reason why as I think anyone will ever come.