Columbine

Columbine is the definitive book on one of the most traumatic and, unfortunately, recurring episodes in the dark history of the United States. On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two seniors at Columbine High School, stormed into their school armed with shotguns and bombs shortly after 11:00 a.m., killing a teacher and twelve students, and wounding many others, before taking their own lives with a gunshot to the head. The event was broadcast virtually live on television and left the entire nation shocked and full of questions. For the next ten years, Dave Cullen painstakingly deconstructed the tragedy in all its scope and complexity in order to find answers and explain, among other things, who the killers were —seemingly two ordinary kids— what motivated them to commit such an atrocity, and how the massacre could have been far worse. Cullen gives voice to the survivors and all the people who played an active role in that event, and what followed, to compose one of the great true crime essays of all time.