Columbine (book)

Columbine is a non-fiction book written by Dave Cullen and published by Twelve (Hachette Book Group) on April 6, 2009. It is an examination of the Columbine High School massacre, on April 20, 1999, and the perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The book covers two major storylines: the killers' lives leading up to the attack, and the survivors' struggles with the aftermath over the following decade. Chapters alternate between the two stories. Graphic depictions of parts of the attack are included, in addition to the actual names of friends and family (the only exception being the pseudonym "Harriet", which is used for a female Columbine student referred to in Klebold's journal entries, with whom he was obsessively in love). Cullen says he spent ten years researching and writing the book. He previously contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, and The Guardian. He is best known for his work for Slate and Salon.com. His Slate story "The Depressive and the Psychopath" five years earlier, offered the first diagnosis of the killers by the team of psychologists and psychiatrists brought on the case by the FBI. Publication was timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999. The book spent eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list in the spring of 2009, peaking at #3. The book gained considerable media attention for addressing many of the so-called Columbine myths that were widely perpetuated by the news media and believed by the general public. According to the book, the massacre had nothing to do with school bullying, jocks, the Gothic subculture, Marilyn Manson, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Cullen also writes that the attack was intended primarily as a bombing rather than a school shooting, and...