Columbine

It's hard to believe that last month it had been ten years since the school shooting at Columbine High School. It's even harder to believe that in that ten years it never really sunk into public knowledge that the plan was not really for only a school shooting, targeting members of specific groups against which the shooters had a grudge, but for the destruction of the school with the highest body count possible. In Columbine by Dave Cullen, you'll find out that much of what we thought we had learned about Columbine in the days and weeks just after the shooting has been disproven by FBI investigation even though the public perception has remained unchanged. Far from the bullied outcasts who snapped that they have been portrayed as, the shooters were the bullies: a textbook sociopath who had been plotting violence on a grand scale for years, and a depressive with angry outbursts who ultimately went along with the massacre as a method of committing suicide. Although graphic descriptions of violence make it not for the faint of stomach, this book is enlightening, especially for anybody who was a high school student, teacher, or parent of a high school student at the time of Columbine and remembers the fear and constant rumors that "something" was going to happen on a certain day that persisted for the rest of that school year. Pictured is the Columbine Memorial - click the image to visit the site.

-- Kristen, Main Library