If it had not been for seeing and hearing Dave Cullen talking about his new book, Columbine, on BookTV a month or so ago, I probably would not have read it. I knew it had been published and knew that it was receiving good reviews, but it just never came into my thinking that I needed to read it until after I heard the author talk about it.
It is probably the most dynamic book I've read in a long, long time. The best thing about it is that Cullen has treated everything with dignity. He has not sensationalized what happened; in and of itself it was sensational enough. He is careful with his words and with the truth.
He has made even the technical parts - all the bomb making and all the psychological investigating - readable and understandable. For us who lived away from the area, once the news reports dwindled away, we didn't have much follow-up information to absorb. So much of what I read in this book was new to me and very surprising. And of course having it condensed into one place really amplified just how horrific it was and continued being for a long time.
Reading this book is not like reading something you already know about. And it isn't like reading a fictionalized story. Cullen did a great job of telling the story, and even his explanation of sources in the back of the book is interesting and readable.
Dave Cullen has helped explain the unexplainable, and that is a real feat. Many kudos to this author.
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