Ceremonial Violence A Psychological Explanation of School Shootings (2008)

I've been waiting for a book like this to come out for years. I couldn't put it down, and then I couldn't sleep. ( )

I've been waiting for a book like this to come out for years. I couldn't put it down, and then I couldn't sleep. ( )

Fast examines in brief 13 cases of rampage shootings at schools, and then examines 5 of these in depth in an attempt to understand certain aspects of this particular type of terrorism. Fast's thesis is that the shootings are a form of "ceremonial violence." A very unhappy child, socially marginalized may commit suicide, but the shooters also combine narcissism and a lack of empathy that causes them to turn their own destruction into a public event that he thinks will be celebrated by fellow outcasts.

Fast's thesis makes great intuitive sense, some but not all of the aspects appear in all of the cases. The book is a very interesting and readable overview of these shootings. Fast cites a vast body of literature that he read in compiling the book.

One flaw in the research is that Fast does not appear to have talked to the surviving shooters, and one of them, Wayne Lo, reported that Fast made no attempt to talk to him. Gregory Gibson, father of one of the victims, accused Fast of using more material from his own book, Gone Boy, than acknowledged in citations. It must be noted that Fast also included a lot of other information about the case, particularly things that happened after the period that Gone Boy covers, although I wonder how much of this is from Gibson's blog.

So in sum, there is some controversy about this book, but it offers a review of a number of school shootings and a thesis that seems plausible. ( )