Summary

From Dave:

I spent ten years covering Columbine, and was struck by how complex and consuming it was. So many fascinating people, such rich stories, all knotted together.

I was compelled by two questions: what drove these killers, and what did they do to this town? That's what I set out to tell.

Early Review:

"Dave Cullen is the Dante of this high school hell. I came away from it thinking of Jack Nicholson hollering 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!' Read this quietly powerful account of Columbine and find out if you can."

– Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars

From the book jacket:

On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence-irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting "another Columbine."

When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window-the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to the prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal.

The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boys' tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.

In the tradition of Helter Skelter and In Cold Blood, Columbine is destined to be a classic. A close-up portrait of violence, a community rendered helpless, and police blunders and cover-ups, it is a compelling and utterly human portrait of two killers-an unforgettable cautionary tale for our time.

From the publisher:

Dear Reader:

I was drawn to Dave Cullen’s work by a New York Times column by David Brooks, who praised Cullen’s freelance writing on the massacre at Columbine. Cullen had been on the scene at Columbine from day one and had distinguished himself as the most authoritative writer on the subject. I asked him to write a short book on the subject.

That was about ten years ago. Since then, this gifted and relentless writer has lived with this story every day, going to extraordinary lengths to understand this tragedy from every relevant perspective: through the eyes of the families, school officials, investigators, community leaders, and most amazingly, the killers themselves, who left behind such extensive personal testimony and evidence about their plans that the author has been able to do something truly remarkable – document the descent of two teenage boys from a typical adolescent life into madness and murder.

What is shocking about Columbine is just how ordinary these two boys seemed. They loved their parents, did their homework, worked at the local pizzeria, and – contrary to widely reported accounts – were well-liked by their peers. With precision and perspective that will haunt and amaze you, Dave Cullen has crafted an indelible portrait of American youth that is at once familiar and horrifying. Better than any author I have ever read, he describes the psychological journey through which young men become killers.

This is not an easy story to confront, but I have no doubt that Columbine will be regarded as a classic of literary nonfiction and the definitive work on the community that suffered one of the most violent tragedies of our time.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Karp
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
TWELVE

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Buy Columbine.

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