Columbine by Dave Cullen

Columbine
by Dave Cullen
Pub. Date: April 2009
Genre: Non-fiction
432pp

Why I Picked It:
Curiosity. Must know more....

My Review:
Where do I even begin? This is a fascinating book. Systematically peeling away the layers of every detail, everything you think you know, from all sides -- the killers, the parents, the victims, the police, the media circus, the coverups, the misconceptions, the opportunists.... And the horror of something so unnecessary and ultimately, unavoidable because no one was really listening.

Parents of teenagers, RUN don't walk to your children's rooms and really take a look. Hack into their accounts and make sure you know what they are really doing, saying, thinking, feeling. These parents were clueless, completely snowed, and completely ineffective. Dealing with a psychopath though, and not admitting or realizing it, I feel just heartbroken for them. They just didn't know. They wanted to believe their children.

Written as well as a thriller, this was a page-turner. Compelling, well-paced, shifting seamlessly from detailing the lives of the victims, sharing the killer's own words from their home-videos, website entries, letters and journals, then telling the parents' stories, parsing in the victims' and other student's perspectives, quotes and some of the background coverup involved in the the Jefferson County official investigation.

I have to say that I loved it. I was heartbroken for Cassie Bernall's family. This book clearly reveals how it was discovered in the investigation that she didn't, in fact, say "Yes" nor was she ever asked "Do you believe in God?" That apparently happened to a different girl who, miraculously survived. But there are differing accounts that bring peace to Cassie's mother, and from what I learned, Cassie has an amazing story even if she didn't die a martyr. I might check out her mother's book for that reason alone.

If you have a morbid sense of curiosity about these sorts of things, then I highly recommend this book. I've been looking at it for a long time, was afraid it would be disturbing and hard to read (which it was), but it was a worthy read for gaining clarification of the senseless act that happened on April 20, 1999.