According to Cullen, they lived apparently normal lives, but under the surface lay an angry, erratic depressive (Klebold) and a sadistic psychopath (Harris), together forming a combustible pair. They planned the massacre for a year, outlining their intentions for massive carnage in extensive journals and video diaries. Cullen expertly balances the psychological analysis—enhanced by several of the nation's leading experts on psychopathology—with an examination of the shooting's effects on survivors, victims' families and the Columbine community. Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill, even if the answers aren't easy to stomach.
Dave Cullen's Columbine was one of my favorite reads last year and the most powerful.
Columbine had every reason to affect me on a personal level. In 1999, I was a senior in high school in a suburb northeast of Pennsylvania with a socio-economic background similar to Columbine High School. Parts of the campus look eerily similar. In fact from the aerial shots of the school, the two biggest differences between my high school and Columbine is the amount of windows (our school had none) and the mountains in Colorado.
One of the victims, though completely unrelated to me shared my last name. And like me, she was also a senior, captain of the swim, and taking an identical load of classes. After the shootings, students in my high school, students who were ignorant, insensitivie, and simply immature, wore trench coats to school, called in fake bomb threats from payphones on campus hoping to get a day off from school, and several kids made an effort to point out every eerie similarity between my life and the life of the girl who died in Colorado.
Last year when a shark in my office mentioned how good it was and waved a copy of Columbine in front of me, I had to borrow it. I spent two consecutive nights up too late reading and rereading certain chapters, I have to believe, while it does affect me on a personal level, it should have the same affect on anyone, even those who are too young to really remember Columbine when it happened.
Columbine is now out in paperback with new material, including a 12-page afterword: "Forgiveness." Vignettes on three victims in very different places eleven years later, and the central role "forgiveness" played in their recovery. Plus startling new revelations about the killers' parents and discussion questions.
As a former high school teacher, students, teacher, and administrators should all read and talk about this book. Prevention starts with awareness.