**THE GROUNDBREAKING BESTSELLER AND CLASSIC** 'Excellent . amazing how much still comes as a surprise' New York Times Book Review 'Like Capote's In Cold Blood , this tour de force gets below the who and the what of a horrifying incident to lay bare the devastating why' People 'A staggering work of journalism' Washington Post 'The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror.' So begins the epilogue, illustrating how Columbine has become the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It makes the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this flame more urgent than ever. What really happened on April 20th, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we thought we knew was wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths or the Trench Coast Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on the scene, and he spent ten years on this book, the definitive account.

With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists , and the killers' own words and drawings - several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.