Download Columbine Audiobook

“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.”

“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.”

“Columbine is an excellent work of media criticism, showing how legends become truths through continual citation; a sensitive guide to the patterns of public grief, foreshadowing many of the same reactions to September 11 (lawsuits, arguments about the memorial, voyeuristic bus tours); and, at the end of the day, a fine example of old-fashioned journalism…[Cullen’s] nuanced dissection of the differences between Harris and Klebold is first-rate.”

“Columbine is an excellent work of media criticism, showing how legends become truths through continual citation…and, at the end of the day, a fine example of old fashioned journalism…moving things along with agility and grace.”

“A gripping study…To his credit, Mr. Cullen does not simply tear down Columbine’s legends. He also convincingly explains what really sparked the murderous rage…Disquieting…beautifully written.”

“Exhaustive and supremely level-headed…The ways in which the Columbine story became distorted in the retelling make for one of the most fascinating aspects of Cullen’s book…Hopping back and forth in time, Cullen manages to tell this complicated story with remarkable clarity and coherence. As one of the first reporters on the scene in 1999, he has been studying this event firsthand for a decade, and his book exudes a sense of authority missing from much of the original media coverage…Cullen strikes just the right tone of tough-minded compassion.”

“A remarkable book. It is painstakingly reported, well-organized and compellingly written…For any reader who wants to understand the complicated nature of evil, this book is a masterpiece.”

“Comprehensive…It’s a book that hits you like a crime scene photo, a reminder of what journalism at its best is all about. Cullen knows his material from the inside; he covered Columbine, for Salon and Slate primarily, ‘beginning around noon on the day of the attack.’ But if this gives him a certain purchase on the story, his perspective is what resonates.”

“Cullen’s book is a nerve-wracking, methodical, and panoramic account… Columbine has its terrifying sections, particularly during Cullen’s minute-by-minute rendering of the chaotic forty-nine-minute assault. He puts us inside and outside the building, and he captures the disbelief viewers experienced in ‘almost witnessing mass murder’ live on television.”

“Columbine is a remarkable achievement. Cullen has brought illumination to a dark and difficult topic, and the result is an example of literary nonfiction at its finest: masterful, clear-eyed, bold—and unforgettable.”

“Comprehensively nightmarish…Columbine is a necessary book…The actual events of April 20, 1999, are exactly as appalling as you’d expect, and Cullen doesn’t spare us a second of them.”

“The definitive account [of the tragedy] will likely be Dave Cullen’s Columbine, a nonfiction book that has the pacing of an action movie and the complexity of a Shakespearean drama…Cullen has a gift, if that’s the right word, for excruciating detail. At times the language is so vivid you can almost smell the gunpowder and the fear.”

“While the details of the day are indeed gruesome, Cullen neither embellishes nor sensationalizes. His unadorned prose and staccato sections offer welcome relief from the grisly minutiae…Cullen’s honor and reporting skills propel this book beyond tabloid and into true literature.”

“From the very first page, I could not put Columbine, Dave Cullen’s searing narrative, down…Reads like the grisliest of fiction. Would that it were not true. Grade: A.”

“Cullen creates more than a nuanced portrait of school shooters as young men. He writes a human story—a compassionate narrative of teenagers with guns (and bombs, too) and the havoc they wreak on a school, a community, and America.”

“A chilling page-turner, a striking accomplishment given that Cullen’s likely readers almost certainly know how the tragic story ends…I knew Cullen was a dogged reporter and a terrific writer, but even I was blown away by the pacing and storytelling he mastered in Columbine, a disturbing, inspiring work of art.”

“[A] remarkable account…Cullen not only dispels several of the prevailing myths about the event but tackles the hardest question of all: why did it happen? 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.”

“Relying on more than ten years of research, award-winning journalist Cullen here pieces together a stunning, authoritative, full-scope view of the Columbine tragedy, reaching powerful and controversial conclusions and revealing several facts previously unknown to the public. Don Leslie reads with both sensation and objectivity, escalating emotion during the often graphic diary passages and helping the story to flow.”

“A penetrating look at the motivation and intent of the shooters…Graphic and emotionally vivid; spectacularly researched and analyzed.”

“[Cullen’s] writing has the immediacy and starkness of a documentary…A deeply unsettling book because it confirms our worst fear: that evil can arise without apparent cause and strike without provocation.”

“Dave Cullen’s meticulous research dispels the myths and hasty assumptions surrounding the 1999 Columbine High School shootings...Don Leslie’s nuanced reading of the disturbing material makes clear that the boys were not goths, gay, or bullied. Leslie is mesmerizing as he makes Cullen’s case that Harris was predisposed to psychopathy and Klebold was erratic, depressed, and suicidal…If this important book were fiction, it would be devastating. Knowing it really happened is heartbreaking.”

“Cullen has assembled a first rate piece of nonfiction history. It illustrates exactly why a public reaction to the daily news so often leads to dangerously false beliefs…Don Leslie, the narrator, is given the grim task of reading the words of Klebold and Harris. It isn’t an enviable job, but he is up to the task…Leslie does his best to make each quote as clear as he can.”

“Comprehensive, myth-busting examination…Cullen sketches multifaceted portraits of the killers and the surviving community…Poignant sections devoted to the survivors probe the myriad ways that individuals cope with grief and struggle to interpret and make sense of tragedy…Carefully researched and chilling.”