Mini-review: "Columbine"

Columbine begins just a few days before the shooting, the day before the high school's prom. The reader is introduced to several students, parents, and faculty members who will very soon be involved in one of the deadliest mass murders in US History. The events of April 20, 1999 are then meticulously laid out and detailed from every possible perspective - the students who escaped the school, the parents whose children were in the school, the mass media, even the shooters. All these stories greatly contradict each other but Dave Cullen is very clear in keeping fact separated from fiction throughout the ordeal.

 

The investigation into the shooting then dominates more than half of the book. The killers left behind so much evidence that investigators were able to paint an incredibly accurate portrait of both of them - Eric Harris, the textbook psychopath who counted down the days until he exerted his godlike powers over the inferior world around him, and Dylan Klebold, Eric's suicidally depressed best friend who found an easy way out with Eric's plan.

 

The entire book is fascinating but what interested me the most was learning just how horribly the press misreported the events surrounding the shooting, and even through the weeks and months after the shooting. Each reporter took a vague lead and ran with it, perpetuating all the myths that many still commonly believe. The idea that the boys were part of the Trenchcoat Mafia, that they were unpopular and bullied, and the girl who died a martyr for professing her faith in God – not only does Columbine debunk the myths, it provides plausible explanations as to why they came about and what fueled them.

 

OK, I realize I called this a mini-review and now it’s pretty long. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that, less than two years out of high school, two kids my age were capable of doing something like this. Columbine is 100% nonfiction but it reads like a novel that I couldn’t put down. If you’ve been on the fence, I say grab it.