Columbine


My attention was drawn to Columbine by Dave Cullen. The major reason I chose this book was because I wanted to learn more on this tragedy. When I began this book all I knew on this topic was that two students from Columbine High School went on a rampage at their school. I was never clear on the details; I knew they committed suicide, but not on the body count. Up until sixth grade I did not know anything about this; I needed some of my friends to tell me what had happened.

When I began this book I thought it was going to be the biographies on the two killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, by some guy who did not even know the two kids. Well I was proven wrong. Dave Cullen did a great job, he got all the facts straight and got as many points of views from people affected by this tragedy. This book showed how it affected victims, the victim’s families, the community, the church, law officials, and also the killer’s parents.

This book isn’t just about the affects of this tragedy, but also on who the killers were. It explained on how Eric and Dylan began to develop such a gruesome scheme. It shows how they thought and some reasoning behind why they did what they did. The lives of the killers are also explained in this book, from their childhood up until the day of the tragedy. It doesn’t go into thorough detail on their childhood, but explains a part of it.

Another thing that is very interesting about this book is the detail. It goes through their planning and the actual attack in great detail. A picture is definitely painted in your mind! It also disproves all the myths that arose after this occurred. One major myth that arose was that a girl was killed because she said she believed in God. Well this caused major controversy, but in the end this was not true. There are many other myths that are disproven in this book.

This book was conclusively one of the greatest books I have read in awhile. This book kept me wanting to keep reading. To me it was very informative and cleared up a lot of things. Even when I finished I wanted to keep researching this topic. One thing I especially liked about this book was that the author did such a great job in organizing and delivering the correct information. This was a great read and I recommend it to everyone.