On April 20th of 1999, I was just about two months old, learning how to kick my legs and recognize my parents’ voices. I was born just two months before the start of one of the greatest epidemics in America’s history. Mass shootings in schools have become what I believe to be America’s greatest pastime, taking the place of baseball. I was of course not old enough to understand the damage two teenage boys caused in a Colorado high school, and my mother thinks this is partially why I have such an interest in this day and what has followed. I was not old enough to understand the emotional damage this shooting would have on the majority of America’s citizens. This summer I rummaged my way through the narrow pathways of Barnes and Noble and came across what I feel is one of the best nonfiction expository pieces of literature the world has ever seen.
Columbine, written by Dave Cullen, is a terrifying account of the school shooting that essentially started school shootings. Columbine was the first attempt of such mass destruction inside of a high school in the United States. It follows in depth police reports, witness accounts and misrepresentation of information by local newspapers. From an outsider this account and detailed description is the stuff of horror movies, and undoubtedly the horror of all parents everywhere. There are moments still when I get upset that I was enthralled by each and every passing second of this terrible day, but I fell in love with this book.
It is eloquently written with sometimes gruesome imagery, so disturbing that I only allowed myself to read under direct light in the middle of the day. Columbine remains a piece of writing that explains human nature more than any book I have ever read. It explains erratic mental lapses, like one of the boys psychotic behaviors that he inhibited for the months leading up to the shooting, to someone that has never studied the human brain. It explains human behavior in instances of mass trauma. It explains why and how the media managed to misreport this event. Most of all, it explains the accessibility to these weapons by minors, and the decision to shoot up a place of education by shooters everywhere.
Boldly and correctly stated by Newsweek, Columbine has “the pacing of an action movie and the complexity of Shakespearean drama.”
Columbine is a shrine for mass shooters. It is every teenage psychopath’s dream and Dave Cullen expertly shows this throughout his writing. This book taught me about the start to the greatest epidemic this country has ever seen. I urge all students to read this book to understand the damage something as tragic as a mass shooting can have on the morale of not only a town, but of an entire student body.
