Review by Choice Review
Cullen is a freelance journalist, and he uses in-depth, on-the-ground reporting to recount in real time the development of the March for Our Lives (MFOL) movement in the wake of the mass murder at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018. Cullen famously spent ten years writing his New York Times best seller Columbine (2009); Parkland was written in fewer than 10 months so it could be published near the one-year anniversary of the event. Consequently, it lacks the myth-busting strength of the earlier work. Cullen's focus is on the birth of the MFOL movement, not on the Parkland shooting itself, so the book offers little insight into why it happened and how it could have been prevented. And though the MFOL movement targets guns, Cullen interviewed just one expert on gun control (Robert Spitzer, political science, SUNY-Cortland), so those hoping to gain perspective on MFOL's main issue of concern should look elsewhere. Cullen's book is engaging and well written, but it is not a scholarly analysis of the MFOL movement. Summing Up: Optional. General readers. --David Yamane, Wake Forest University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
I WAS IN THE audience at the March for Our Lives last year when Emma Gonzalez, one of the Parkland, Fla., high school students, suddenly fell silent. As the minutes passed, and she stared us down, her big brown eyes filling with tears, I had the same thoughts as probably every other protective adult in the crowd: Did she freeze? Forget her lines? Is she just overcome? Is this poor, brave kid having a public nervous breakdown? What never occurred to me is what Dave Cullen was at that moment chronicling backstage for his book "Parkland": Everything about the moment of silence was choreographed, the culmination of weeks of planning by the most intrepid group of teenage survivors ever. These were not a bunch of kids fumbling onstage. Starting within hours after the Valentine's Day shooting, they had begun to assemble into a semiprofessional roving advocacy troupe, focused on moving the needle on gun control. As one survivor, David Hogg, vowed on TV only hours after 17 of his fellow students were killed: "I don't want this to be another mass shooting. I don't want this just to be something that people forget." By the time the rally took place, barely six weeks after the shooting, Emma was used to being referred to as "talent," sitting for countless interviews and profiles noting her shaved head and those big eyes ("intense," "warm," "piercing"). She and a handful of kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had already faced down Marco Rubio, raised millions from a GoFundMe campaign, beat back hundreds of trolls on Twitter, fielded legal advice from George Clooney and used their youth to try to silence the N.R.A. and guilt the nation. "We're children. You guys are the adults," Hogg said on CNN. "You need to take some action." The Parkland survivors emerged at just the right time for Cullen. He wrote the book "Columbine," a deeply researched and thorough account of the 1999 massacre at a Colorado school that ushered in the era of school shootings. Years of covering shootings, being called as an expert talking head on shootings, writing and thinking about shootings have left Cullen with a diagnosis of "vicarious traumatization," he writes, and twice in the last seven years he's found himself sobbing and immobilized for days. Although he doesn't say it explicitly, following the Parkland kids seems like a form of therapy for Cullen himself, and, he hopes, the nation. "There were no vacant stares from the Parkland survivors," he writes. "This generation had grown up on lockdown drills - and this time, they were ready." With "Parkland," Cullen aims for a straightforward inspirational story of a group of kids "healing each other as they fought." They knew one another from drama club, and instinctively understood how to position themselves on a national stage. At a candlelight vigil, one of them introduced herself to the Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who connected her to a state senator, who helped the kids figure out how to get floor time at the statehouse. Another came up with # Never Again while he was on the toilet in his pajamas. The hashtag went viral and landed him on "Anderson Cooper 360" and NPR. Basically every time Emma Gonzalez opened her mouth, she went viral. And within a couple of weeks they had ambitions of planning a rally as big as the Women's March. How or why these particular kids came to be so rapidly effective is not exactly clear from the book. Cullen partly chalks it up to generational wisdom. They understood news cycles and Twitter, viral videos and memes, and they set out to make themselves as relevant as possible. They understood they would be perceived as privileged white kids who live in gated communities, so they made alliances with groups that focus on urban school violence and shared the stage with them. They understood that no politician wants to be seen dismissing a kid who just saw his or her friends shot, so they staged as many showdowns as possible. In retrospect it seems extraordinary that all the pieces came together so effortlessly, yet even after reading the book I'm not exactly sure why this group of kids, at this particular moment. In "Columbine," Cullen punctured the lazy media narrative that the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were goth vigilantes, crusaders against bullies and mean girls. They were, he concluded, a psychopath and a depressive, and should be viewed through the lens of mental illness, and not school cliques and revenge - a point he's repeated about many school shooters since. And partly thanks to Cullen, the rules of covering shootings have shifted. It's become something of a taboo to spend too much energy on the psyche of the shooters, and definitely a taboo to glamorize their motives in any way. In his new book, Cullen spends barely three pages on the Parkland shooter, giving just the barest biographical details, mostly about his depression, and referring to him only as the "mass murderer." It's a noble goal, to refuse to feed our fascination with the deranged teenage killer or provide the convenient horror movie plot. May every journalist follow his example so fewer mentally ill teenagers get the idea that shooting up their school will make them famous. But that commitment also presents a separate narrative challenge, which is how to create a story with drama and tension. Cullen spent the 11 months after the shooting following the kids, which is enough time to plot the stages of their crusade but not necessarily enough to understand their internal struggles. He hints at possible tensions: parents worrying whether their suddenly energized kids were just suppressing trauma, kids getting used to their sudden fame, kids getting hammered by internet trolls, facing death threats, losing their friends who were jealous that now they had thousands of followers on Twitter. He mentions a mother who went to a support group and was chided because her son wasn't at school at the time of the shooting - part of what Cullen refers to as the "weird hierarchy of victimhood." But Cullen breezes by these moments and quickly returns to the ticktock of organizing the big rally. Maybe it's unfair to place even more burden on this group of teenagers to become our perfect heroes. After all, at the time they were facing down congressmen, they were still not old enough to vote. But I did find myself wishing for some more depth, detail or psychological complexity, something to cement these extraordinary kids in the public imagination so that we'd never forget what they somehow managed to pull off. HANNA rosin, a co-host ofthe NPR show "Invisibilia," is the author of "The End of Men."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 9, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Cullen, the author of the groundbreaking Columbine (2009), brings his eloquence, expertise, combination of deep research and concision, and unbiased perspective to yet another mass school shooting, revealing its deepest layers and resonance. The story he tells about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018, in Parkland, Florida, is a very different story from that of the 1999 tragedy in Columbine because Cullen focuses on how the March for Our Lives (MFOL) movement emerged like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the devastated community. Cullen never names and rarely discusses the Parkland shooter because his focus is on how this school-shooting generation found direction and meaning as survivors by working actively, passionately, and purposefully to champion a reasonable approach to stemming gun violence. Cullen, who worked with the MFOL movement and similar anti-violence groups, discusses their creation, evolution, methods, and suggestions for preventing gun violence by shaping policies for safeguards and avoiding political partisanship. This moving, defining, and important account of an essential and vital youth movement dedicated to change and saving lives belongs in every public and school library. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Cullen's standing as a school-shooting chronicler and the ongoing concerns over gun control make this a strong draw for social-issue readers.--Jennifer Johnson Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
School shootings are horrors, but, as journalist Cullen (Columbine) depicts in this page-turner, something hopeful has risen phoenixlike from the Valentine's Day 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.: an eloquent, organized group of survivors who have become nonpartisan activists for reasonable gun control. "There are strains of sadness woven into this story," he writes, "but this is not an account of grief." Cullen, who got to know the students over 11 months, recounts how the movement began the day of the shooting, with David Hogg's first plea for calls to congresspeople on national television; grew as the Parkland activists forged connections with less-heralded teens advocating against gun violence in Chicago; and led to the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. Along the way, he draws nuanced portraits of several students, among them Jackie Corin, a preternaturally organized junior who handles logistics and event planning, and Cameron Kasky, a theater kid who was the first to tweet #NeverAgain. Cullen makes sure they come across as "kids, because that's who they are"; despite their unusual maturity, they get tired, act out, break down. Both realistic and optimistic, this insightful and compassionate chronicle is a fitting testament to a new chapter in American responses to mass shootings. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
We all know about the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, the movement it sparked, and the teens who continue to speak truth to power. But do we really know the young people behind the tweets and interviews? Journalist Cullen (Columbine) tries to answer that question, documenting the impact of the tragedy and pain that swept through the community, as well as the movement that served as a lifeline for all involved. This work gives voice to the faces behind March for Our Lives, exploring their world behind the scenes to introduce a group of extraordinary people thrust into the public eye by one of the worst events in U.S. history. Exposing the physical and emotional effects of activism in light of tragedy while examining the solace of action and community, Cullen presents a well-balanced review of the Parkland shooting without too much emphasis on the perpetrator or the horrors of the day. VERDICT An -emotionally gripping, very human portrayal of the people behind March for Our Lives. A solid choice for readers interested in current affairs, gun legislation, and young people in America.-Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib., Miami © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An incisive study of one of the past year's most significant mass shootings, with publication tied to the one-year anniversary.Cullen spent 10 years researching and writing his book Columbine (2009), which meticulously documented the Colorado high school massacre, with an emphasis on the two students who planned it. This time, in the aftermath of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, committed by a former student on Feb. 14, 2018, the author has produced an impressively deep account in just 10 months. Never naming the murderer of 14 students and three staff members, the author focuses on surviving students who coalesced to promote gun control by spreading their message, encouraging voter registration, and seeking to influence legislatures at the local, state, and national levels. Starting with his initial coverage of the story for Vanity Fair just after the shooting, Cullen immersed himself with the students, many of whom left classes to tour the nation. Throughout the book, the author demonstrates his rapport with the students as well as Parkland parents, teachers, and community leaders. When he deems it appropriate and relevant, Cullen effectively compares and contrasts the Columbine and Parkland experiences. As he notes, his years of immersion in the Columbine tragedy left him with secondary PTSD, so diving in to the Parkland aftermath felt personally risky. However, he persisted, believing that the hopeful messages of the students would outweigh the darkness. Chronicling how the mostly middle- or upper-class Parkland students eventually expanded their crusade to address other issues related to guns, Cullen memorably captures many of the interests they share with often stereotyped inner-city teenagers from violent neighborhoods. In nearly 60 pages of detailed endnotes, the author expands on the revelations in the main narrative, discusses his information-gathering methods, and discloses potential conflicts of interests due to the close relationships he has formed with survivors.In both Columbine and this up-to-the minute portrait of the Parkland tragedy, Cullen has produced masterpieces that are simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful about a saner future. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
