Two new books get into the twisted minds of the Columbine killers

[RamboLiberal]

What was it about Columbine?

Of all the school shootings over the past two decades, it's the one that festers, an ugly wound that won't heal.

Now two journalists try to understand the incomprehensible as the 10th anniversary of Columbine nears.

-----

Dave Cullen's Columbine is the more ambitious and ultimately compelling take on the tragedy. He tries hard to get inside the heads of Eric and Dylan, writing in teen-speak that allows us to inhabit their twisted points of view.

-----

But Jeff Kass, a reporter for the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, casts a harsher light on Dylan. He opens his straightforward Columbine: A True Crime Story with a chilling account of what happened in the library. You can't read it and feel anything but revulsion for Dylan. Kass' book also benefits from extensive excerpts and drawings from journals both boys kept.

More insightful psychological profiles of Eric and Dylan can be found in the newly published Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters by Peter Langman (Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95). Langman makes a strong case that Dylan was also a psychopath.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2009-04-01-columbine_N.htm

From Amazon.com

Columbine by Dave Cullen

"In this remarkable account of the April 20, 1999, Columbine High School shooting, journalist Cullen not only dispels several of the prevailing myths about the event but tackles the hardest question of all: why did it happen? Drawing on extensive interviews, police reports and his own reporting, Cullen meticulously pieces together what happened when 18-year-old Eric Harris and 17-year-old Dylan Klebold killed 13 people before turning their guns on themselves.... Cullen expertly balances the psychological analysis-enhanced by several of the nation's leading experts on psychopathology-with an examination of the shooting's effects on survivors, victims' families and the Columbine community. Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill, even if the answers aren't easy to stomach." (Publishers Weekly, Starred Reivew )

"Dave Cullen is the Dante of this high school hell. I came away from it thinking of Jack Nicholson hollering 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!' Read this quietly powerful account of Columbine and find out if you can." (Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars )

"Half the anguish of Columbine is our mystification. How did those boys get so twisted, so murderous? Now, after nine years of great reporting, Dave Cullen has done the impossible: you will know these killers -- and it will shake you up. This is a big-time work that will endure."

(Richard Ben Cramer, author of Joe DiMaggio and What It Takes )

"Salon magazine's Dave Cullen... has been on top of the Columbine story from the start." (The New York Times Frank Rich )

Columbine: A True Crime Story, a victim, the killers and the nation's search for answers by Jeff Kass

Ten years after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve classmates and a teacher, Columbine remains the world's most iconic school shooting.

Columbine: A True Crime Story, a victim, the killers and the nation's search for answers is the first book of investigative journalism to tell the complete story of that day, the far-reaching consequences, and the common denominators among school shooters across the country.

Jeff Kass was one of the first reporters on the scene and has continued to cover the story as a staff writer for Denver's Rocky Mountain News.

He has broken national stories on the shootings such as leaked crime scene photos, and the sealed diversion files of the killers. He has also reported the story extensively for the Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, and U.S. News & World Report.

The result of ten years of research and exclusive information, the book reaches into fundamental American themes of violence, racism, parenting and policing.

Concluding with the tale of the tattered police investigation and how one of the most controversial victims' families faces down a modern American tragedy as the cameras roll, Columbine: A True Crime Story is a classic in the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song.

Foreword by noted historian Douglas Brinkley, exclusive cover art by renowned artist and cultural commentator Ralph Steadman, and photos from the archives of the Rocky Mountain News, which won the Pulitzer for its Columbine photography.

Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters by Peter Langman

"Dr. Langman's professional expertise and exhaustive research combine to produce a remarkably comprehensive psychological analysis of school shooters that will revolutionize our understanding of this phenomenon. This book provides an in-depth psychological analysis of school shooters that easily can be understood by non-professionals. The outstanding balance between psychological insight and plain language makes this book invaluable to anyone who works with children."--Mary Ann Swiatek, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist and member of the Association for Psychological Science

Dr. Langman ...clearly identifies the enormity of the feelings of isolation and meaninglessness that plagued these children. Shows what we can do to make schools safe and homes friendly and child focused. Perhaps his greatest contribution is to point out that hyper reactive child exist in a social context that if it is not empathic and helpful can perhaps trigger the calamites he describes. -- Stuart Twemblow, author of "Why School Anti Bullying Programs Don't Work" "We desperately need this book. It provides an interior view of the mind of rampage school shooters that helps us understand the origins of the narcissism, paranoia, sadism, and thwarted rage that appears to motivate them. Through the learned hands of Peter Langman, we come to understand the differences between shooters who are pyschopaths and those who are schizophrenics, and why these distinctions matter. A dispassionate, but clinically powerful analysis, Why Kids Kill, will be of great interest to teachers, parents, school administrators, and law enforcement officials who are responsible for prevention and treatment."--Katherine S. Newman is thesenior author of ""Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings"" and the Forbes '41 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University

“A thorough analysis of recent school shootings and a helpful prescription for prevention geared to readers outside the psychiatric profession.”—Library Journal

“The result of his decade-long inquiry…plumbs the interior lives of 10 notorious school shooters—including Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho—to draw conclusions about what set them off.”—Michael Rubinkam, The New York Times

[hendo]

1. It is much easier to blame the kids

rather than the society that formed them. Columbine was an incredibly clique-ish school. We could always blame bullying for school shootings, or any of another thousand factors. Why do that though, when we can comfort ourselves by saying that something is innately wrong with the person who shot their classmates? It separates the school shooter as an other, something that is different from us, somehow inferior, and definitely psychotic.

[RamboLiberal]

2. Sorry, can't agree with you - there's been a lot of students

who've been harassed and bullied - but didn't go on a rampage like Klebold and Harris. There was something wrong with these two kids. I'll be interested in reading these books for further insight.

From some of what I've read these two were not bullied in any greater degree than the other students and actually had their own group of friends.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. The odd and different students got treated even worse by the schools afterwards...

Tales from the Hellsmouth and More Tales from the Hellsmouth on Slashdot were most instructive.

[hendo]

4. If there's one thing that schools do well, its perpetuating the problem. NT

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. A friend of one of our daughters got a counseling referral for writing a letter to Dr. Evil

It was a high school creative writing assignment to create a persuasive letter. Teacher freaked out, and send the student to the counselor who apparently did not keep up with popular culture and movies either. They eventually came to the conclusion that the the student was involved in devil worship or a cult, and wanted her suspended until she went through counseling and was certified as safe to return to school. They put it in writing!!!

[hendo]

6. I love it when schools do something that stupid, and are stupid enough to keep a written record

did she sue? and win?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Principal intervened and it all went away, though the teacher was quite clear she was very

uncomfortable about having the student in her class. Neither the teacher nor counselor had never seen any of the Austin Powers movies.

Some have pointed out that the student was being a smart ass and was being disrespectful to the teacher and the educational process by taking using such a flippant scenario. I personally found it quite funny. Each and every aspect of the assignment was covered well, and the overall it was well done. The assignment sheet had used examples of ecological issues to politicians, but the choice of topic and target were left to the student. They were specifically told not to discuss school related topics. The story behind that restriction purports that a few years back in a similar assignment a male student had turned in an assignment advocating topless cheer leading, though other versions have that it had argued for the dismissal of a staff member.

[hendo]

8. topless cheerleading?

now theres an intiative I can support.

[goddess40]

9. different kids have different thresholds

if the schools these boys had attend had real anti-bullying or a more comprehensive character education program k-12 this never would have happened.

[stray cat]

11. There is no such thing as a bad boy or a bad man - its all societies fault

:sarcasm: Murderers are not necessarily good people who were mistreated

[XemaSab]

13. How do you make schools less cliquish?

School uniforms? :shrug:

[RamboLiberal]

10. 10 years later, the real story behind Columbine

They weren't goths or loners.

The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver's Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren't in the "Trenchcoat Mafia," disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn't been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags."

Their rampage put schools on alert for "enemies lists" made by troubled students, but the enemies on their list had graduated from Columbine a year earlier. Contrary to early reports, Harris and Klebold weren't on antidepressant medication and didn't target jocks, blacks or Christians, police now say, citing the killers' journals and witness accounts. That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.

A decade after Harris and Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information — including several books that analyze the tragedy through diaries, e-mails, appointment books, videotape, police affidavits and interviews with witnesses, friends and survivors — indicate that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.

In fact, the pair's suicidal attack was planned as a grand — if badly implemented — terrorist bombing that quickly devolved into a 49-minute shooting rampage when the bombs Harris built fizzled.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-13-columbine-myths_N.htm

[HelenWheels]

12. The author changed the definition of bullying

"The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver's Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren't in the "Trenchcoat Mafia," disaffected videogamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hadn't been bullied — in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags.""

The author changed the definition of bullying to make his findings fit his outcome. He violated the rule of " we all get our own opinion but we don't get our own facts" which makes his entire book a lie. If you watch "Bowling for Columbine" You'll see fellow students talk about the bullying these two went through.