I honestly didn’t know much on the Columbine tragedy. All I knew was, it was a big shooting caused by two people that impacted the school and community. Dave Cullen’s Columbine, opened my mind and knowledge on the tragedy.
Dave Cullen starts Columbine off at the prom assembly, being a freshman at Columbine, I had just attended the prom assembly, I could see how much both assemblies resembled each other. Dave Cullen definitely wastes no time and get’s right into the tragedy on April 20, 1999. Cullen goes into great detail about Eric and Dylan’s procedure to carry out the tragedy. He tends to jump around a lot, from the actual shooting to different events. That helped my understanding of how certain people got to where they were during the shooting, but at times I found it to be confusing. Cullen goes into great detail about the obtaining of the guns and ammo, the building of the bombs, the relationships Eric and Dylan built, and their pasts with the police. The pages from Eric and Dylan’s journals helped me understand their thinking and how Eric’s characteristics matched those of a psychopath. Dave Cullen ends the book with the survivors and victims’ family healing and coping years after the tragedy.
Dave Cullen’s, Columbine, was a book I would recommend you to invest your time in if you would like to know more about the Columbine tragedy and Eric and Dylan’s plans in detail. After reading Columbine, my knowledge of the tragedy went from just barely knowing anything to knowing the names of those involved, to knowing the details of the obtaining of the weapons, to their thinking and journals, to the many myths and confusion, and to the process of building and healing the Columbine community. Columbine is a strong-welcoming family that only became closer after the tragedy.