Columbine | Sharky's library | TinyCat (2024)

”A fundamental nature of a psychopath is a failure to feel.” (page 415)

Dave Cullen’s ten year stint, meticulously researching the 1999 shooting massacre at Columbine High School produced the most chilling narrative non-fiction account of murder I’ve ever read. And that includes

Blood and Helter Skelter. You just can’t help but be impressed by the thoroughness of Cullen’s research and his gift as a prose writer of non-fiction. No mind-numbing list of facts with end notes on top of end notes and little thought about the interest of the reader for this author. Despite the depressing subject matter, Cullen made the characters in the narrative very real.

I thought I knew the story fairly well but apparently I just bought into the propaganda put out by the police (and reported by main stream news sources), who flaunted the very laws they were sworn to upheld by covering up and trying to deflect criticism from the fact that they knew about the two perpetrators as early as 1997 and failed to follow simple police procedure in following up on an investigation. They not only stone-walled, making the relations of the murdered furious, but they destroyed evidence linked to their earlier inquiry.

Cullen’s descriptions of the killers, the psychological background of each, their deliberate and painstaking planning over a two-year period, their devious methods of getting guns and making pipe bombs is documented thoroughly and so well written that it took my breath away.

He quickly and thoroughly debunked the myths that have grown up around the massacre such as the idea that the murderers were bullied, that they targeted jocks, that they were racists. A fascinating section of the book was devoted to the effects of trauma on witnesses of a horrific event and how memories are affected by trauma.

”Investigators identified nearly a dozen common misperceptions among library survivors. Distortion of time was rampant, particularly chronology. Witnesses recalled less once the killers approached them, not more. Terror stops the brain from forming new memories. A staggering number insisted they were the last ones out of the library---once they were out, it was over. Similarly, most of those injured, even superficially, believed they were the last ones hit. Survivors also clung to reassuring concepts: that they were actually hiding by crouching under tables in plain sight. Memory is notoriously unreliable.” (Page 351)

Cullen documented the effects of the massacre on the survivors, those badly injured and the bereaved left behind. It took years for all of the information to be released and the public is fortunate indeed to have had this author to document the long painful process. Not an easy read by any stretch but important, and part of the history of our country. Very highly recommended.

Imagine you're watching a play. The play is similar to another play that you've seen before, several plays, in fact. This time there is a screen in front of the stage made of fine black gauze. You can see and here what it going on behind the gauze, when the light shines a certain way you could

almost forget the gauze is there. Then the scene ends and when the curtain rises again the same scene is played again, this time without the gauze screen. The same words are spoken but in some by different characters than you thought the first time. In other cases you can see the actors' expressions completely now and the words, though the same, have an entirely different sensation.

This is what reading Dave Cullen's amazing book is like. I thought I knew the story of Columbine - after all I'd seen it play out on my TV screen - but I was watching the whole thing through the gauze of misconception and insta-reportage. Cullen rips the gauze away and tells the whole story. It's not enough to say he sets the record straight, that sounds like he fixed the punctuation; This isn't a merely book, it's a revelation.

When people asked me what I was reading and I answered "A book about Columbine"
the usual reaction was a visual and verbal mixture of puzzlement and dismay. "Why are you reading about that" they'd ask, "hasn't that been done to death?" The simple answer is that the truth of Columbine hasn't been told until know. And when I'd puncture a few of the myths that we'd all believed to be truth - it wasn't the Trench Coat Mafia, they weren't Goths, etc - the response was "No way" followed by "I need to read this book, too."

Yes, you do. This is the must-read nonfiction book of the year.

Cullen spent years talking to the everyone involved who would talk to him and the result is a story that is actually more horrifying that anything reported at the time. Far from being bullied teens who fought back - and wasn't that always a bit of wish-fulfillment on the part of reporters and viewers alike? - this is the story of a clinically depressed teenager in the hands of a teen-age psychopath. Eric Harris, the psychopath in question, is exponentially more terrifying than science fiction monster for the simple reason that you wouldn't invite "Alien" into your home but you'd give Eric the keys to your house to watch it while you were on vacation, all the while thinking what a nice, responsible young man he was. Meanwhile he'd be building napalm jet backpacks in your basem*nt. Eric was misunderstood, all right, because he wanted it that way. Cullen presents one of the clearest explanations of psychopathy I've come across and the evidence for Harris being categorized as a psychopath is overwhelming.

Dylan Klebold, as Cullen notes several times, is more concerned with love than hate but the whole that depression leaves in his soul is filled by Eric Harris's hate for all humanity. It's easy to imagine Dylan Klebold taking a different path. By contrast, one can only see Eric Harris committing other more heinous crimes. Was it just bad luck that led Klebold into Harris's path? Who knows? That's the point that Cullen isn't afraid to make - that no one knows what created Eric Harris or what made Dylan Klebold so vulnerable to him. It wasn't being bullied or bad parenting or video games or Twinkies or music with hidden messages or any other stock, easy answer.

Cullen does find heroes and villains and mixtures of both. The families of the murdered react in different ways, from painful to witness hatred to self-destruction. The community reacts with compassion, understanding, exploitation, fatigue and finally ambivalence. I thought Cullen did an especially sensitive job of dealing with the role spirituality and faith played in the healing process. For some their faith allowed them to accept the tragedy with a peace reminiscent of the Amish school shooting. Others are moved by their faith to reach out the parents of Harris and Klebold only to find their actions denounced by others of the same faith. Yes, there are some who wittingly or not exploit the tragedy in the name of their religion and Cullen calls that out, too but this is a balanced portrait.

This is one of the best non-fiction books of the decade. The reporting is excellent and the writing is even better. Anyone who enjoys thoughtful non-fiction and/or wants to better understand the society we live in should make it a point to read this book.

And if Mr Cullen doesn't have a stack of awards on your shelf for this book by this time next year then I will lose all faith in book awards.

Very well written and especially researched book by a reporter, Dave Cullen, who was there at Columbine and followed the case long after the rest of the media moved on to the next horror show.

Columbine demythologizes so many of the absurd and, what have sort of become urban legends about the

killers: They were racists, skinheads, goths, trenchcoat mafiosos on a mission from Marilyn Manson, satanists, haters of jocks on the hunt for Christians .... Wrong.... They weren't any of those things, regardless of how the media and some local law enforcement officials erroneously depicted them at the time.

Turns out, those two lost teenage boys were even worse than those evils misapplied to them. They hated everybody, including themselves. Had they been as proficient in transforming propane tanks into homemade bombs as they were at shooting students and teachers on the run with chilling accuracy, they may not have had to shoot anybody, except perhaps the first two they killed walking out of the school as they were marching in, as those bombs (it was later determined) had they been wired correctly, could have levelled the entire school and killed at least 500 people, thus putting the incident at the level of a terrorist attack rather than a school shooting.
And such destruction would've placed those boys, where they explicitly dreamed of being, in the same league as Timothy McVeigh.

Even after reading the book, reading lengthy excerpts from the killers' diaries, there's still no definitive answers to the infinite arrays of WHYs?

While I recognize what a stellar job Dave Cullen did in researching and writing Columbine with its sensitive, non-linear structure that better explained the incident than writing a straight A-Z timeline, I still don't recommend it, even though it's good, if not great.

Columbine is just too damn depressing, compelling read or not.

I had been waiting for a book like Columbine for a long time, and this book did not disappoint. Columbine tells the story of the school seige at Columbine High School near Littleton, CO in April, 1999. It's all in here: information on the thought processes of the killers, a step-by-step account of

the siege, and a dissection of the aftermath and destruction of community which followed. Cullen spares no sensibilities in confronting us with unpleasant realities. Some of the descriptions border on "graphic". This will likely be the definitive tome on the tragedy until the parents' police interviews are released in 2027. Cullen seems to produce a balanced picture, including varying viewpoints where there is controversy. Any rumors or suppositions are labeled as such. The only negative point is that Cullen isn't very good with the mechanics of writing. He uses too many pronouns in some paragraphs, leading to confusion. He sometimes begins a point, then trails off onto another topic. The saving grace is that the emotional impact of his writing is top-notch. His conclusions are very different from the accepted myths regarding the tragedy. (As in No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine by B. Brown) However, I had read Brown's book and came to different conclusions than Brown. The facts are not mutually exclusive between the two books. Cullen provides additional information not available to Brown, coming to a more sophisticated presentation. This book is perhaps not for everyone, but is highly recommended for those who are interested in the subject.

On April 20, 1999—the day all hell broke loose at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado — I was working as an assistant state education chief in Arizona. We had a close relationship with our counterparts in Colorado, and as the Columbine story was breaking on national television, we

were on the phone with officials in Denver, asking what they knew. Their answer was always the same. "Not much," they kept telling us.

Not much. That would remain the case most of the days and weeks to come. No one really knew much of anything — and the more information that came out, the more conflicting and unclear everything became. Eventually, we all came to understand Columbine through snippets reported in the media — and by putting together all the little stories, we came up with one terrible story of epic proportions: Take two picked-on loner/losers — members of a "Trench Coat Mafia" — and agitate them with Goth culture, German speed metal, violent video games, and a fascination with Hitler. Throw in bad parenting and bullying and easy access to guns, and you’ve got the Molatov co*cktail that eventually exploded in a high school shooting that left 12 students—including one brave girl who declared her faith in the Lord and died at point-blank range—and one teacher dead.

It all makes for a fascinating, tragic, terrifying, and sometimes uplifting story. The only problem is that not much of it is true. And that’s what makes Dave Cullen’s book COLUMBINE so important.

Sorting through a decade of interviews, police reports, recorded 911 calls, psychiatric analyses, and tens of thousands of pages of assorted documents — many of which were intentionally buried by local authorities — Cullen puts together the definitive story of the what really happened at Columbine and, perhaps even more daring, tries to explain why it happened.

Prior assumptions are dashed almost immediately as we learn that killers Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold were neither loners nor geeks nor members of the Trench Coat Mafia. They dated, had jobs, participated in student theater, went to football games, and got good grades. As far as Cullen can tell from the data and careful discussion with an incredibly competent FBI psychiatrist, Eric Harris, the mastermind behind the spree, was simply a psychopath with a superiority complex, incapable of true emotion but a master of mimicry, becoming whatever it was parents, police, teachers, or friends needed him to be — all while secretly declaring his hatred for the world and plotting for years his own version of Judgment Day. Dylan Klebold, meanwhile, was more introspective and empathetic (his journals contain more of the word love than hate), but silently spiraled into petty theft, poor grades, and depression, no longer caring whether he lived or died. Together, they made for a volatile combination.

That’s not to say the signs weren’t there — and what Cullen uncovers is both frightening and appalling. Parents had complained for years about Harris’s bullying and threats. Harris kept a very visible website on which he detailed his progress with bombmaking and ranting about murder. One police officer, in fact, had written a meticulously detailed request for a search warrant of Harris’s house more than a year before the shooting, but the paperwork was either bungled or ignored and never went before a judge. After the shooting, local officials huddled together and squashed the report and hid away police records. Most wouldn’t see light of day until 2005. Others were shredded or remain hidden.

There’s been some grumbling that Cullen doesn’t give every victim the same amount of page space, and that’s true — Cullen doesn’t give some any space at all. But I think Cullen makes the most of the stories he does focus on, giving stories of wasted potential, bravery under fire, teachers and administrators who put their students first, and anguished parents who sometimes can’t cope, whether they lost a child or not. Cullen chooses stories that are illustrative and compelling, and I don’t think the absence of anyone’s particular story made the tale any less tragic or forceful.

Cullen begins his book with a literal bang, starting with the shooting (and botched bombing) at the high school, then works backwards, alternating Eric and Dylan’s story with chapters on the some (though not all) of the victims, and the investigation. It might sound like a disjointed approach, but it works. Further, Cullen writes in a compelling manner — I’ve seen some reviews call his style novelistic, but it’s more magaziney, in the best sense of the word: easy to start, broken into easily managed installments, and always tough to put down. Cullen’s description of the shootings is as cold and impartial as it deserves to be — very little drama, reporting the events in a matter-of-fact manner, almost as if they were all caught on the unflinching tape of a security camera (as some of it was) — while his discussions of psychopathy and depression never get bogged down in terminology.

Perhaps his most unpopular job is debunking the Cassie Bernall story, in which Bernall was allegedly asked by one of the shooters “Do you believe in God?” and shot in the head when she answered in the affirmative. The conversation did occur, but it happened with Val Schnurr — who lived to tell the tale — and was attributed incorrectly to Cassie by an eyewitness. The story was debunked early, but Cassie Bernall was nevertheless embraced, martyred, and exploited by the religious community. It would be easy to either make fools of the religious community and their stubborn refusal to let go of the story (wouldn’t it have been just as powerful, Cullen rightly asks, to have an example of someone who had proclaimed their faith in the face of certain death and through God’s grace lived to deliver the message?) or to deferentially caveat the story, taking neither side. Cullen doesn’t do that. Instead, he relates the tale and the controversy respectfully but firmly, making clear what really happened, but respectfully refusing to condescend.

Cullen’s narrative is full of plenty of bad guys — including some in unexpected places — and plenty of good guys, but it’s at its best when telling the stories of regular people trying to make sense of the horrifying. They’re all stories that deserve to be told, and Cullen tells them well without ever stooping to sensationalism.

Ultimately, COLUMBINE will challenge you to re-examine almost everything you know — or think you know — about that horrific April afternoon. Check it out.

Unlike many momentous events that have occurred in the past 20-30 years, I don't specifically remember where I was or what I was doing when the Columbine massacre occurred. I think I was probably out of the country on a business trip, because I can't believe that I wouldn't have been glued to my TV

had the opportunity presented itself to me.

Dave Cullen was one of the original on-site reporters who covered events, and realized that the whole story, the motives, the people, the aftermath, have never been comprehensively put together for the public. Many of the police reports were withheld, many important witnesses or others involved had never been interviewed or given the opportunity to speak about what they knew or saw.

He culled through literally thousands of pages of interviews, police reports, evidence, photos, autopsy reports, psychologist statements, and follows up with as many of the people involved as would make themselves available to him in order to write this story. The result is a tour de force: a cohesive, exhaustive, comprehensive and thoughtful examination of what happened, why it happened, how it was reported, and what the aftermath entailed. He debunks many myths that arose from false or inadequate interpretation of early reports; he spends a good deal of time trying to get into the minds of the two killers and helping us try to understand why they did what they did, and he gives us a much needed factual account of the event that has come to be known simply as "Columbine."

The events of that fateful day shaped in many ways responses to subsequent mass shootings, but the fact that such shootings continue shows that while we may think we have a handle on what happened, we have yet to figure out how to stop it from happening again.

The killings at Columbine High School have always been a bit of a mystery to me. We've heard the media coverage - bullying of goth kids by jocks, revenge killings, etc. But I've never been satisfied with the attempts to understand the thinking of Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold. Much of what's been

published about the events that day has been contradictory, and the coverage by the national media just died away when a new story came along. So in some sense, we have been no better off in understanding and preventing this sort of thing than we were before it happened.

Fortunately, David Cullen has spent the last ten years researching this very question, and his result is the very good Columbine. Based on many thousands of pages of evidence, witness testimony, and interviews with those actually there, Cullen has cut through the fog to give what is probably the most accurate story of the Columbine killings that can be pieced together. Along the way, Cullen clears up some of the myths that have grown up around the story. If for nothing else, this book is incredibly valuable for that clarity, but he also discussed how the mythology surrounding such events can grow - a fascinating story in its own right.

Columbine was hard to read in spots, not because of the book itself, but because of my emotional reaction to the story. The peek into Eric and Dylan's inner lives is revolting in spots, and I found myself bouncing between horror and empathy. Dylan, especially, was a very troubled kid that probably could have been helped, had help been forthcoming. Eric had a history of violence, and the local police could have prevented the shootings if they had followed up on reports by others around him. I was angry with the way the Jefferson County sheriff handled the event, the following investigation, and the release of information gathered. I was moved by the spirit of the school principal and staff as they dealt with the aftermath to the detriment of their own personal lives. And the survivors' stories ripped my heart out. It's a tribute to Cullen's ability that Columbine manages to evoke all this emotion while staying elegant and thoughtful without any hint of tabloid reporting.

They didn't target jocks. They weren't loners. They weren't especially bullied (although they enjoyed bullying others). Cassie Bernell didn't say "Yes." (Val Schnurr did - and was vilified). Just a tiny sampling of the myths, misconceptions, and outright screw-ups that are uncovered in this

compelling, thorough, and absolutely chilling examination of the Columbine Massacre.

Dave Cullen was there from the beginning, and pursued every avenue, every thread, every lead. The breadth of his research is astonishing, and the humanity he brings to everyone in the story is heartwarming, and so very painful. The generosity of all the participants - from the principal, to the kids, to the FBI agent; from the other journalists, to the investigators, to the Klebolds - was amazing and contributed to the overall completeness of the picture. (This generosity does put in stark contrast the refusal of the Harris's to contribute anything to anybody.) Cullen doesn't spare the media (including himself) from the charge of contaminating the eyewitness reports and setting the misconceptions in stone. He also gives considerable attention to the coverup engineered by Jefferson County to suppress the early warnings about the boys' activities, and the disappearance of several thousand pages of reports, scans of Eric's website and other important documents.

I found this book to be riveting and nightmare-inducing. Highly recommended.

Columbine by Dave Cullen is an intense, close look at the events that unfolded at Columbine High School in April of 1999. An enormous amount of research, interviews and follow-up was put into this project by the author in order to give us a final, comprehensive view of this tragedy.

I vividly

remember following this incident on TV that day, and in the days that followed. I ended with a vague impression that 2 Goth students, fed up with being bullied, went to school that day with guns for the purpose of vengeance. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Dave Cullen lays out the evidence that took him ten years to gather from a step by step outline of what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s mind set was that day, to the accusations of police cover-ups, to the recovery process for the survivors, and the emptiness left by those who did not survive. So many rumors swirled around in the days immediately following the massacre that it was hard for the police, the press, the families and even the students themselves to separate the fact from fiction. It took years of painstakingly working through the evidence that finally led the investigators to a resolution.

There is no easy answer when violence of this nature erupts but this book goes a long way toward giving us a clearer picture of what happened and to a certain degree why it happened. Author Dave Cullen is to be commended for providing such a memorable, thoughtful analysis of this hateful event.

Dave Cullen masterfully weaves a narrative of one of the darkest days for America in the 90s. He debunks myths that have lasted a decade with facts that will leave his readers shaken. He also blends in the inspirational stories of victims families and survivors to balance out the grimness in this

must read expose.

This is the way nonfiction is supposed to be written.

It doesn’t all have to be funny, ala Bill Bryson or Mary Roach, but it should be more than just an informative list of facts. I think that often, nonfiction writers’ greatest flaw is that they try to cram too much into their books. They

spend years researching something and they want to squeeze in every piece of information they find, even if it hurts the book’s pacing and flow.

Columbine doesn’t fall into that trap. Ten years after the tragic school shooting in Colorado, Cullen’s book gives us the whole picture without overwhelming us. Even though I knew the outcome going into the book, it still managed to keep me enthralled throughout. The plotting, the information, the descriptions, the balanced views, it was all so well done.

Cullen was a young reporter on the scene when Eric and Dylan, two high school students, opened fire on their fellow students. The author manages to keep his personal experience and opinions out of the book entirely, which can be incredibly difficult when you devote a decade of your life to the material.

There were a few facts that really surprised me. First, Eric and Dylan (particularly Eric) had multiple reports filed with the police because of various crimes or threats they had committed. There was even a drafted warrant for Eric’s home that was never sent to a judge. If someone had looked closer at his life or listened to a particular family that he had been threatening, who knows what might have been prevented.

Second, the “She Said Yes” girl who was killed in the library… didn’t say yes. Cassie’s martyrdom was one of the most enduring elements of Columbine and it turns out that’s not what happened at all. Another girl was asked if she believed in God, she said no, then yes, but she wasn’t killed because something else distracted Eric. Cassie was shot and killed, but no one asked her a question first. It may seem unimportant, but because of this confusion, people thought the girl who was actually asked that question was just copying Cassie’s story and many people didn’t believe her. How awful would that have been?

I was a high school student when the shootings happened and I remember them so well. When I started the book I was dreading it. I’m not a news hound and I didn’t want to rehash the tragedy, but the book doesn’t do that. Instead it clarifies the confusions and explains what happened, both from the killers’ perspective and the community’s. Whether you consider yourself a nonfiction reader or not, Columbine is a powerhouse book.

I heard Dave Cullen give several radio interviews at the end of April – the ten year anniversary of the Columbine shootings. The interviews were absolutely compelling, not only because of the subject matter but because in them, Cullen, who was there that day and has spent the last ten years

compiling this book, corrected so many falsehoods that live on about that day.

However compelling, it took me three weeks to get up the nerve to buy and read “Columbine”. As the mother of two children, I knew, of course, that this was a book that I wouldn’t be able to forget, wouldn’t be able to put down when finished, at ease with the fact that “it’s just a book”. It is real, and could happen again.

My first reaction was to the cover, which is perfect. A picture of the school at the bottom and simply that name, in white letters, “Columbine”. Because really, for those of us that weren’t there that day, and despite the efforts made by those who were, to take back the name of their school, that says it all. It remains the name of an event, a massacre.

Given that, I was very unsure how I’d react to reading about that day, those events, the dead children and teacher. But though chilling and sad, the book wasn’t depressing. (Even as I write that, I wonder if it should have been. Is there something wrong with me?) Instead, “Columbine” is a masterful work, one that fleshes out the people we all saw on TV, gives them lives and reactions beyond just the one infamous day.

The stories before and after April 20, 1999 give souls and feelings to the names in the headlines. We learn more about the town, the school, those killed…and the killers. And as tempted as some authors might have been to focus solely on Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Cullen gives the victims and the heroes of that day just as much of a focus.

The principal, Frank DeAngelis, who four days before the fateful day, told all of his students that he loved them. And also, in an ironic twist of fate, told them, “I do not want to attend another memorial service.” His focus was the prom the next day and the inherent dangers in that, but as I read his words, I found my eyes filling with tears.

The teacher, Dave Sanders, who bled to death despite the best efforts of his students, who had left his home that day without kissing his wife, which he never did.

The victims, like Danny Rohrbough, one of the first killed, whose body was left outside overnight… “Brian’s son just wasn’t a priority. Brian couldn’t believe they were treating a victim’s body so cavalierly. Then it began to snow. Danny lay out on that sidewalk for twenty-eight hours.”

So many stories…but finally the correct versions of what happened in Colorado that day. I never knew the extent of the misinformation that was out there. So many half truths, untruths, exaggerations…understandable under such circ*mstances, I suppose. Things like the Trench Coat Mafia, which became a symbol of the event…trench coats that the killers wore that day mostly to conceal their weapons. The idea that they were loners who targeted jocks…despite the truth that they were good students with many friends and that the killings were random. So much of what I knew of that day, those people was wrong, and this book is a very clear and honest accounting.

And of course, to the question of “Why?” Even a reporter who immersed himself in that question and the horrors of that day for ten years, has no complete answer. It becomes clear that Harris was a psychopath and Klebold his suicidal follower, and even when clarifying what might have been clinical facts and diagnoses, Cullen brings depth to the words. “Psychopaths do not feel much, but when they lose patience with inferiors, they can really let it rip. It doesn’t go any deeper. Even an earthworm will recoil if you poke it with a stick. A squirrel will exhibit frustration if you tease it by offering a peanut, then repeatedly snatching it back. Psychopaths make it that far up the emotional ladder, but they fall far short of the average golden retriever, which will demonstrate affection, joy, compassion and empathy for a human in pain.” Chilling.

As a mother, I of course turn to the parents of the killers. How did they not know? Was it their fault? What was wrong with them that created these two young murderers? Cullen does some of his best work here. With the Klebolds, that is. As much as I can’t imagine being the parent of one of the victims, it is completely out of the realm of possibility for me to imagine being a parent of a murderer...who then killed himself. I can’t imagine much worse of a hell. But of the Harrises, there is mostly silence. They did not, and still will not, speak publicly. But Cullen does excellent work presenting the facts in a way that seem as fair as possible to all parties.

Though the headlines have faded and the events are a decade in the past, there still remains the word. “Columbine”. School shootings continue… “Moms felt their muscles clench, bracing for the terrifying news. Some had almost forgotten Columbine, but their bodies remembered.”

From an event filled with pain, fury, sorrow, grief, confusion and despair…Dave Cullen brings forth what might have been missing all along. The truth, the facts. Not cold hard ones…but the truth of those that lived, and died, and killed.

There may not be and probably never will be an answer to “Why?”…but now we have the real answers to “What?”

If you're like me, you probably figure you know all there is to know about the horrors that went on at Columbine High School just over a decade ago.

If you're like me, you couldn't be more wrong.

Journalist Dave Cullen has followed the story since those horrible days in the spring of 1999, when two

high school kids entered their school and began to open fire. Cullen's "Columbine" explores what the duo hoped to achieve as opposed to what was initially reported--and it will chill you. Had the two carried out the plan as envisioned, the attack on the school would have been far more devastating than it was.

What's most fascinating is the way the myths of the story have become the facts. Cullen explores not only the two instigators of the attacks, but also those touched by the tragedy both before, during and after the events. It's a story that reads like fiction but is too tragically real. If you think you know the story, read this book. It's chilling at times but it may help serve as a warning to help us see the signs coming again in others and prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

I am have mixed feelings about the book, which gives a ten years after perspective to the Columbine school shooting. A fair portion of the book simply tells the story of what happened, debunking many of the myths the media built up at the time along the way. It is these parts of the book, which are

compared to The Executioner's Song, and while Cullen is no Mailer - the writing is good and the story lines of the victims and survivors that he follows are intriguing. Were this is whole book, I would have considered this an excellent example of true crime writing - factual and unbiased. Indeed, through reading this book I realized that every understanding I had about Columbine was wrong, the most of the media got it completely wrong at the beginning and never bothered to fix there mistakes. Cullen's insider perspective to how the media erred is a valuable part of the book.

So, what is wrong. Well, one of Cullen's sources was an FBI profiler and he diagnosed one of the killer, Eric Harris as a psychopath. Harris was a psychopath - BUT - I in reading the book, I found that that fact added little to the story relative to the space it was given in the book. Admittedly I prefer the Mailer approach of not trying to analyze the mind of the criminal - but this focus was particularly weak as Harris's psychopathy does not in and of itself explain how and why Klebold became involved - or indeed why Harris ended up a killer instead of a business tycoon.

At the time of the killings at Columbine High School I did not follow all of the news stories about the event. I was curious about it but I was waiting for a thorough, well researched account that was not written for ratings or selling newspapers. This book is what I was waiting for. Dave Cullen,

the author, is a reporter with the Rocky Mountain News who worked on this book for almost ten years. The book is very thorough and shows the results of extensive research. Most important the author is more interested in providing the facts than selling some theory about why this happened. It is clear that the author made a strong commitment to tell all of the truth he could find.
The description of what happened opens the book with great drama. Then we go back to the beginning and are taken slowly through the events a second time with the complete story of the killers actions included. Interwoven through these events is a narration of the exhaustive investigation and the stories of the people who lived around the killers. The primary focus of the book was the ongoing stories of the people involved which gives a humanity to this tragedy and is the strength of the book.
Frank DeAngelis was the principal of Columbine at the time of the killings. At the first assembly of the students after the killings he took the stage and expressed his grief in tears. This was extremely important in giving the students the courage to express their feelings about this unspeakable tragedy that occurred in their midst.
Patrick Ireland was one of the students who was seriously injured. He showed courage and perseverance after this violent event that completely changed his life in a matter of seconds. Cassie Bernall is one of the students who was killed. What happened to her in the moments before her death became an event in itself which illustrates how the actions and motives of others in response to a tragedy had their own agenda. Dwayne Fusilier was an FBI investigator who was also a clinical psychologist. It is his investigation of the killers and their motives that comes closest to providing any answers to the why of this tragedy. It is their stories and many others that kept me so interested in this book.
The story of Columbine is also the story of human mistakes that may have contributed in some way to the tragedy. Mistakes made by law enforcement, mistakes made by the juvenile justice system, mistakes by school personnel and mistakes by parents. The author simply sets forth the facts with a minimum of speculation. The reader is left to make their own conclusions. While I could point to a mistake and say that would have made a difference, my conclusion is that these were mistakes made by people like myself and it was the actions of the killers and not these mistakes that created the tragedy of Columbine.
The main story is that of the killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their lives are told in great detail. They left behind a mass of material about their lives and plans. As they got toward "Judgment Day" they recorded a series of tapes about their actions. They both kept journals setting forth their inner lives and their motives. The killings at Columbine were planned in detail. If the plans had been successful many more would have died. What they left behind made it clear that it was their plan done for their own reasons that created this tragedy. As Eric Harris quoted in his journal,"Good wombs have born bad sons".
After reading this book I am no longer curious about the facts of Columbine. The author shows respect for his readers in leaving them to make their own conclusions. I only know that it happened. It happened because two young men wanted to kill people and they were able to get guns and bullets and learn to make explosives. The only way to stop an event like this is to limit freedoms or teach people to love each other. I don't mean to make it sound simplistic it is just the basic facts.

This is more than a history of events. It is a story of the people involved, and the many ways people were impacted by the events of that day. Intellectually, I knew that it was not just the families of the victims, but others who also had personal storms to weather. This is their story, too.

This

is not a story of the horror, that is present but only as background. It is a story of a town, a school, and the people. It is a dispassionate telling of events, the shooters and their families.

Highly recommended

A very thorough account of the 1999 Columbine school shootings, including the killers' personalities and preparations, the question of what was going through their heads (and why it's not what most people assume), the details of that day's events, the sometimes problematic media and police

response, the aftermath for the survivors and their families, and the influence the incident has had on society at large. It appears to be very carefully researched, and Cullen never indulges in sensationalism, points fingers of blame, or shows a vested interest in any of the mythology that has sprung up around the event, but instead attempts to evenhandedly lay out the complex and messy truth, as far as that truth is known. It is, unsurprisingly, very difficult to read, and yet it's also highly compelling. Every time I put it down, I had trouble making myself pick it up again, and every time I picked it up, I had trouble putting it back down.

I don't know what you can say about a book like this. Columbine was the word poised on the lips of any high schooler. Everyone asked themselves if they were a potential victim. It got to the point where my sociology professors refused to read any papers about Columbine because they had read so

many. Everyone spent the next 2-3 years asking why, how, and what can we do to prevent it from happening again. No one got any answers. And now it seems like everyone's almost forgotten about the small-town tragedy. It's especially important to me because it happened in my senior year of high school. In another life, a few tweaks here and there, I could have been one of the killers.

The book jumps around a little. It starts with a detailed description of the preludes to the event (an assembly, the prom, etc.) and the known, verified events of 4/20/99. Then it splits into two narratives. One is the aftermath and analysis thereof. How the cops screwed up, how the media screwed up, the heroes and maligners among the students. The other is a profile of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and their evolution into what they became. The book is one of the most complete, well-thought historical event analyses I have ever read (but I haven't read many).

It's nice to know after ten years in such a personally interesting event, what really happened. The untruths behind the trenchcoat mafia and Marilyn Manson. The influences and avenues they used to get the weapons they needed (that are still open). I never knew that the "Do you believe in God? Yes." story was never corroborated, or how non-methodical the massacre was. The media did a horrible job of reporting the truth around the event. The police and SWAT team did a horrible job of taking action. They could have saved lives if they'd taken more risk, but I don't think they knew what they were dealing with. No one did, they still don't. That's part of the reason it fascinates.

Anyone who grew up plus-or-minus the Columbine era should read this book. You're probably already interested in Columbine because you were one of them. This book is on the long side. But it's well-written, explains everything with journalistic integrity, and gives great insight into why it became a thing, and why it no longer is.

We all remember, or know of, what happened on April 20, 1999 at a high school in Littleton, Colorado named Columbine. Two teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened gunfire on their classmates and teachers - killing 13 and injuring dozens of others.

Dave Cullen is a journalist who covered the

massacre for over two years. In this book he sheds light on all the commonly held myths about what really occurred that day, and fits it all together for us in a timeline that unfolds along with our understanding of what really happened and who the killers really were.

So let me give you a rough estimate of what I remember Columbine was about (I was 20 at the time and I remember being so distraught over what was unfolding live on television - a boy dangling from a window; the students running out of the school single file with the help of the SWAT team, the tears, the memorial services). But more than anything else, I remember: two teen boys who were bullied by the cool kids (the jocks, cheerleaders, etc.), they couldn't take it anymore so they grabbed some guns (obviously because they are so easy to come by for underage kids) and decided on taking revenge on the whole lot of them. They were part of some gothic/emo club called "The Trench Coat Mafia", listened mostly to Marilyn Manson music and watched the movie The Basketball Diaries over and over for inspiration. They were loners with little to no friends and their parents weren't in the picture. At one point they actually asked one of their victims if she believed in God and upon answering "yes" she was killed.

Now here's the shocker, NONE OF THIS IS TRUE!

I think that's why I was so interested in reading this book. It's like knowing the ending of a story but needing to re-read the beginning because what you thought was right was wrong. Mr. Cullen gives you extensive "insider" information on not just the killers and their victims, but the parents of both, the teachers, the lack of organization with the school and the foul-ups from the law enforcement, the easy access to firearms, the willingness of authorities/adults to overlook signs that might have avoided the whole thing. He even gives you detailed information on the extensive journals, videos, and online postings that were left behind by both Eric and Dylan.

I will confess that this is not a happy book - obviously you know how it all ends. And I will confess to feeling sad, outraged, scared and even depressed while reading it. I couldn't sleep all that well and just kept thinking about it over and over. Who were the Harris's & Klebold's of MY school... and was I on a list somewhere? Or could I have been Harriet? (Harriet = a girl that Dylan obsessively mentions in his diaries; a dream girlfriend).

I had to Google the whole thing since there were no pictures throughout the book (which annoyed me at first - I would have settled for a map of the school). In the end I think the lack of pictures gave it a more serious tone.

It is still a touchy subject, but we all know the Columbine massacre is something that will always remain in our heads -- you might as know the real story. I know that this book might not be for everyone, but for someone who is interested in getting the facts about America's most notorious school shooting, this is definitely the book you'll want to read. It is well-written, gripping and in the end, enlightening.

I might have known I couldn't get through the week or two it would take me to read Columbine without a current school mass shooting going down. (It was the one at Umpqua Community College.) It seems like we have one or two each month in the US these days, as contrasted with their roughly quarterly

occurrence back in the late decades of the previous century. Guns are much easier to get now, so there's that, along with the snowballing of the phenomenon itself: the media spectacle and cultural spasm which was a conscious objective of the killers.

Ten years after the 1999 mass homicides and shooter suicides at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado, Dave Cullen completed writing what is probably still the most thorough and authoritative examination of those events. It is not the final word, however. The parents of the killers, particularly those of Eric Harris, who seems to have been the dominant partner in the project, have been understandably silent, and there is a court seal on many materials in the investigation that will not expire until 2027. Still, Cullen worked on this story from its outset, and followed it long after all the students had graduated, the controversies had been exhausted, and its "record" exceeded by the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007.

Cullen's book begins with a recounting of the April 1999 events from the perspective of teachers and students. Then he splits his narrative, with one part going back to the childhood of the killers and following them forward to their deaths, while the other alternating part continues to follow victims, investigators, and press in the wake of the killings. On the whole, this approach works well, with short chapters heavy on documented detail.

As I look at the thumbnail description of the Columbine massacre in the "List of school shootings in the United States" on Wikipedia at this moment, it consists of two sentences, one of them false. It is not true that Harris and Klebold "had complained of being bullied and ill treated by other students." That claim is part of the matrix of conjecture and myth that accreted around the killers from the day of the event, and solidified through media treatments while police concealed facts from the public for years.

Even in the front matter, Cullen offers a mea culpa regarding the errors and misdeeds of the press regarding Columbine High School. And the press comes to figure as a villain in the later chapters, as their desire to perpetuate a story comes into conflict with the survivors' need to grieve and move on. What's more, although the killers' incompetence meant that they did far less damage than they had planned--all of their large bombs were hopeless failures--the media "bomb" meant that they gained their memory all of the notoriety and even inspirational influence that they coveted.

This book's sober yet sympathizing approach and its thorough command of the public evidence are antidotes to still-popular misconceptions about the 1999 massacre in Colorado and American school shootings generally. Unfortunately, the issue is as current as ever.

As did most Americans, I followed the events of the Columbine massacre intently. I was shocked that anything on that scale could happen. I continually listened to and watched the news for information on what happened and, most importantly, why it happened at all. More than 11 years later, I thought

I knew the basics. What I found as a result of reading this book was that I knew pieces of misinformation provided via the media. Retractions are never prominent and rarely have the impact of the original story. For example, Michael Moore apparently believed the myth that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went bowling the morning of the massacre. In his book, Dave Cullen strips away the myths, rumors, and untruths, bringing to life the facts leading up to, including, and following the Columbine massacre. Although non-fiction, Cullen's writing is so engaging that, although I remembered that day and its aftermath pretty well, I was transfixed. I didn't want to leave my car (I read the book via audiobook) because I just had to know exactly what happened next.

I spent a good deal of time talking about the book while I was reading it, but three things continue to come to mind even to this day: Cullen's research into why Eric and Dylan did what they did, the reality of what they'd actually planned on doing, and the Klebold family (see my post from yesterday).

Much of the media focus and, therefore, myths surrounded the simple question "Why?" Cullen did not find much evidence to support the conventional wisdom that Eric and Dylan were bullied to the point of explosion. What he discovered was that Eric was a psychopath and Dylan was suicidal. The combination of these two personalities proved deadly.

I don't want to go into any details regarding Eric and Dylan's original intent. If you've not read the book, this discovery will prove to be some of its most dramatic moments. I would equate talking about it here to adding spoilers when reviewing a work of fiction. Suffice to say that it shocked me, had me talking about Columbine non-stop at work, and kept me up several nights thinking about it.

I rented the audiobook for Columbine from the library because I wanted to read it *now.* It fit in more readily to my audiobook schedule than it ever would have in my neverending TBR pile. It's narrated by Don Leslie, who did an outstanding job reading material that at times was hard enough to listen to - let alone read outloud. I would highly recommend him as a narrator. The person responsible for putting this book into Leslie's capable hands was a genius.

Wow, how to sum up my thoughts and feelings about this book? I don't think there has ever been a work of non-fiction that has had this effect on me. It opened my eyes to the way time and extreme crisis impacts memories. Cullen did a spectacular job of telling the story without taking sides. The factual tone of his writing says so much about the difference when people choose to let tragedy devour them versus let it challenge them to become better, stronger people. I don't know how I could more highly recommend Columbine than to tell you that I bought it in paperback while I was listening to the library's copy. I had to have a copy in my hands to keep. I just had to.

This was an incredible book. It was done carefully and honestly and debunks everything you thought you knew. What you end up seeing is in all actuality more of a tragedy than reported. The murders, semi adults as they may have been...STILL lacked so much. But because their parents won't talk we'll

never know what caused them get from point A to murdering 13 classmates and injuring too many more. The only thing clear is it didn't have to happen if the adults in the lives around Eric Harris specifically would have reigned him in fully on his openly bad and getting worse behavior. Some victims see and saw their gunman as monsters. But they were not a fraction of what they wanted to be. And pathetically ended their lives when they couldn't manage to get shot by police fire they engaged in. They weren't bullied in the shootings, least not Eric and not Dylan once he found Eric. They WERE bullies. They kept escalating their behavior and it went unchecked by their parents, school, and police (who know Eric Harris who was in trouble for serious thief and avoided jail by going into a youth diversion program was making pipe bombs! The police filed it away as if it meant nothing when Eric should have had been sent to jail or juvenile detention for making the weapons! And his parents ALSO knew he was doing this as his favorite hobby). A dark angel was on their side to get them started on their massacre but fizzled when they realized Eric screwed up big time...he wasn't the smartest young man on earth! And failed to construct functional bombs to level the school (the way he and Dylan planned to die was in the mist of the explosion. The killing spree was just a bit of human hunting "fun and amusem*nt" before they said goodbye to the world forever. When that didn't happen they killed NO OTHER living human being until they killed themselves in extreme disappoint when Dylan's car (their last hope for a big explosion) also was a dud do to Eric's arrogance.

The book helped me understand events I watched and 'lived through' on by watching it on TV like 911. I was in shock but transfixed that kind of evil exists. I always am which is is why I always like reading true crime. Especially serial killers because they intrigue me on what level of depravity they must operate on a daily basis to do the awful deeds they do. Women Serial Killers fascinate me the most because of the myth that used to exist and is subconsciously still in use.....women don't kill viciously in a serial fashion. It fascinates me to wonder why.

In Columbine Mr. Cullen presents as complete and accurate a picture of what happened before, during and after the massacre at Columbine High School on April 19, 1999 as we are likely to get for a very long time. (Some evidence is still sealed; some witnesses still have not granted interviews.)

Whatever there is to learn from this tragedy, if anything, can be learned from reading Columbine.

Mr. Cullen structures Columbine in three main alternating parts. The events of April 19, 1999 are described in detail in the opening and closing sections of the book. I was struck by how much the media got wrong in its quest for instant and constant coverage on the day of the shootings. Mr. Cullen demonstrates just how unreliable eye-witness testimony can be, so much so that I will forever doubt it even when it is my own. Yet the media relied on eye-witness testimony from tramautized high school students who were sometimes simply repeating misinformation they had heard on television and radio moments earlier. As a result several myths became widely believed: the shooters were bullied outsiders without friends, the shooters were part of a trench coat mafia, the shooters were gay, the shooters were fans of Goth music, the shooters targeted minority students, the shooters targeted jocks, the shooters targeted Christians. None of these were true.

Mr. Cullen alternates his account of April 19 with an analysis of how the two shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, came to be mass murderers. By learning how this happened future tragedies can be prevented, some argue. It is clear from Columbine that Harris was the leader of the two. Mr. Cullen traces explores the work of Dr. Dwayne Fuselier who spent years studying Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold through their journals, homemade video tapes, court and medical records and the testimony of those who knew them. That Eric Harris was a psychopath comes as no surprise, but just what that entails is not widely known. Psychopaths are not typically violent. They have no emotional guilt or empathy for others, their goal is to manipulate those around them, but this only rarely results in violence. There is no effective treatment for psychopaths. In fact, treatment may be a way for psychopaths to become better at concealing the fact that they are psychopaths because it helps them learn how to fake being normal. While Eric Harris's mental illness led him to kill, Dylan Klebold's made him suicidal. No one knew the full extent of their conditions until afterwards. Both boys were in treatment programs as a result of an earlier arrest; both appeared to be doing well.

The third alternating part of Columbine is the aftermath--what happened during the criminal investigation, how the survivors and their families tried to recover and how the nation reacted. The people involved were all average people, put in the media spotlight through tragedy and without preparation. Mr. Cullen gives them their fair due. He does not make anyone a hero, nor does he demonize anyone. He presents a well researched, well written version of events.

I was not in the United States when Columbine occurred. Although it made world wide news it wasn’t obsessively covered overseas like it was here. After I came back, frequent reference was made to Columbine whenever there was a shooting. Eventually, I saw Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore.

It

was the events at Sandy Hook that had a really profound effect on me. I recently watched a Frontline special on the survivors of Sandy Hook and a brief reference was once again made to Columbine. I decided I needed to read about this seminal event in more detail.

One thing I can say is that this book does an excellent job of debunking many of the myths that seem to have sprung up about Columbine. I felt that I understood in a much more clear and concise manner the role the media played in hyping this tragedy and reporting incorrect or speculative information that has since become enshrined as “fact”.

I also felt that I got a much better picture of the victims and each of the individual perpetrators. Although the two who caused the tragedy are lumped together, after reading this I realized they were two distinct personalities, with different issues and that their coming together, created the conditions for this tragedy.

The victims and their families were better delineated and what each went through as they struggled to come to terms with the events and outcomes at Columbine High School. The survivor’s stories were very powerful and speak to the ability of the human species to triumph while never forgetting what happened.

The worst part of this story was the role the media played. Incorrect reporting, constant live footage, perpetuating it year after year in ways that did not allow survivors to heal and move on, and the hype around the perpetrators that mythologized their actions creating blueprints for future tragedies.

This is a heavy book and I am glad I read it with some time behind these events. I fear with the 20th anniversary coming up, these events will be dredged up by the media yet again. I don’t believe that is a good thing. It gives weight to what the perpetrators did and dishonors those who died and those who survived.

I urge those who have questions to abandon internet searches and read the book. It delves more deeply into the mental health issues and truths surrounding these events and debunks some of the myths and misunderstandings about this tragedy. A great read, but very heavy material.