Dave Cullen
Author of Columbine
About the Author
Dave Cullen is the author of the New York Times bestseller Columbine. He covered Parkland for Vanity Fair since the first weekend, following the Parkland kids around the country and into their rehearsals, their clandestine office, and their homes.
Image credit: Photo by MaryLynn Gillaspie.
Series
Works by Dave Cullen
Associated Works
Backstabbers, Crazed Geniuses, and Animals We Hate: The Writers of Slate's "Assessment" Column Tell It Like It Is (2006) — Contributor — 20 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Cullen, Dave
- Legal name
- Cullen, David Thomas
- Birthdate
- 1961-06-03
- Gender
- male
- Education
- University of Colorado at Boulder (MA|Creative Writing)
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BS|Math & Computer Science) - Occupations
- journalist
- Organizations
- United States Army
- Awards and honors
- GLAAD Media Award
Society of Professional Journalists Award - Agent
- Betsy Lerner (Dunow, Carlson & Lerner)
- Relationships
- Berlin, Lucia (mentor)
- Short biography
- Dave Cullen is the author of Columbine, an indelible portrait of the killers, the victims, and the community that suffered one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century. He is a journalist who has contributed to the New York Times, Times of London, Slate, Salon, New York Daily News, The Guardian, 5280, Pacific News Service and In These Times.
Cullen is considered a leading authority on the Columbine killers, and has also written extensively on Evangelical Christians, gays in the military, politics, and pop culture. A graduate of the MA program at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Cullen has won several writing awards, including a GLAAD Media Award, Society of Professional Journalism awards, the Jovanovich Imaginative Writing Award, and several Best of Salon citations. He is an Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma at Columbia University.
Dave grew up in Chicago, and has worked in most regions of the U.S., as well as England, Kuwait and Bahrain. He worked as a computer systems developer for EDS and a management consultant for Arthur Andersen. He served as a Private and a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He moved to Colorado in1994, and currently lives in Denver. - Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
Denver, Colorado, USA
Kuwait
Ft. Benning, Georgia, USA
Dallas, Texas, USA
Manama, Bahrain (show all 10)
Blackpool, England
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Urbana, Illinois, USA
Washington, D.C., USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
From my blog: http://weelittleactress.blogspot.com
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Recommended Tea: The Republic of Tea's Earl Greyer
Recently I was working at the bookstore and one of our regular customers approached me.
"Do you have the new Lucy Cousins book?"
This particular customer is a whiz when it comes to kids' books. He knows everything new, usually before we even know about it. Thankfully this time we show more happened to have the exact book he was looking for.
I love helping Mr. Enthusiastic, as I have dubbed him, because he is... um... enthusiastic.
"Look!" he said, "I have to show you this page..."
He flipped to a section of the book that told the story of Little Red Riding Hood. There, in this brand new children's book, written by the creator of Maisy, was a picture of a wolf getting his head chopped off with an axe.
"GEEZ!" I exclaimed.
"I know!" he said, "Isn't it fantastic?"
I started to tell him about an article that I recently read about fairy tales. About how in the good ole days, children's stories weren't all roses and sunshine. They were scary, graphic, terrifying, usually involving diseases and orphans and murder. Think the fire in Bambi (I still get a little shaky thinking about that) times one-thousand. The article argued that stories like this were important for a child's development. When introduced to concepts like violence and death at an early age, children, apparently, are able to process these things more easily later in life rather than being completely blindsided by them. They SHOULD learn about these things as children in a safe way rather than being raised to believe that in life, everything is tied up in a nice little bow.
It was at this point that he looked at me and said "Yes... in real life, there is no happily ever after."
It struck me as more than a coincidence that this encounter occurred while I was reading Dave Cullen's Columbine - a book that I had been eager to read for months.
I know exactly where I was when I found out about the shooting in 1999 (which, Cullen argues, was actually a failed bombing meant to kill hundreds). I was in my grandmother's living room, sitting in her big leather chair that is now my big leather chair, watching the footage on her television that was as old as stonehenge.
I remember seeing all of the images, now burned into our consciousness, for the first time. Children running with their arms above their heads. Heads thrown back in sorrow. The boy in the window.
Almost immediately, the media (as we liberals like to call it) started providing answers to the collective American question mark surrounding the horror. "Oh, they were bullied." "Oh, they listened to Marilyn Manson." "Oh, they were nazis." "Oh they were goth kids." "Oh, they were racists."
Then the heroic stories started to pour out. Cassie Bernall declaring her faith in the face of death. A modern day martyr. Then came the songs, the sermons, the books, the testimonies.
Guess what? None of these things actually happened.
Cullen's book, rather than being an exposé on the inner-workings of twisted, bullied, outcast kids serves as a means to show the world what they really were - kids. One introverted, lacking self-confidence, with a desperate need to feel loved and accepted. The other, a textbook sociopath. Both were popular, well-liked, and intelligent. They were desperate to go to prom, to get dates, to fall in love. Both had close friends that were Christians and minorities. Neither of them were goths or racists.
But this just goes to show what we as Americans are trained to do when a tragic, unimaginable event takes place - we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and find the moral. Find the lesson learned. Find the happily ever after.
When I was about to turn 13, my older brother passed away. I thought that if I could find the lesson that this event was supposed to teach me (we Southern gals and our "sposed ta's"), I would be healed. If I could wrap it all up in a big bow, make it all make sense, it would be as if none of it had ever happened and my pain would vanish.
I took the standard "Well, if this had not happened to me then x and z would not have happened, either, so really, it was a good thing," approach. This made me feel "fixed," like I wasn't screwed up anymore, and didn't have to deal with all of the scary questions. I could now be the brave girl with her life completely together, better and wiser than she was pre-tragedy. At that age more than any other, you see the world in black and white terms. There is an answer to every question. Doubt is not okay. Doubt equals weakness.
Turns out, I'm just as confused now as I was then. The only difference is that now I'm able to admit it.
Later, I found an old brown paper bag with some of my brother's last wishes written on it. "Tell Amanda that it's okay to ask questions," it said. Only now do I fully understand what he was trying to tell me.
Usually when I blog about the books that I've read, I try to describe a moral or lesson that I've learned from them. But the very point of Cullen's book is that there aren't always morals. Trying to tie up all of the loose ends can sometimes cheapen the experience and nullify the humanity. It serves only to provide us mental relief - "okay, we've learned what that was about and now we can move on." But who wants to see their lost loved ones reduced to a lesson or a microcosm? What high schoolers want to see their school reduced to a symbol for what is wrong with young America? The truth is that truth - life - is more complicated than that, and reducing everything to something that you would read on a sampler doesn't do truth, or life, justice.
Our role as humans is to examine, to pursue, to use our minds and wrestle with what life hands us. Sometimes, there are no answers. Sometimes, there is no black and white. And only through embracing and accepting the question marks, the grey, can we see ourselves as we really are - complex, terrifying, beautiful, irrational creatures.
Like Ms. Stevie Nicks says, "Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? I don't know."
I don't know. And guess what? That's okay. show less
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Recommended Tea: The Republic of Tea's Earl Greyer
Recently I was working at the bookstore and one of our regular customers approached me.
"Do you have the new Lucy Cousins book?"
This particular customer is a whiz when it comes to kids' books. He knows everything new, usually before we even know about it. Thankfully this time we show more happened to have the exact book he was looking for.
I love helping Mr. Enthusiastic, as I have dubbed him, because he is... um... enthusiastic.
"Look!" he said, "I have to show you this page..."
He flipped to a section of the book that told the story of Little Red Riding Hood. There, in this brand new children's book, written by the creator of Maisy, was a picture of a wolf getting his head chopped off with an axe.
"GEEZ!" I exclaimed.
"I know!" he said, "Isn't it fantastic?"
I started to tell him about an article that I recently read about fairy tales. About how in the good ole days, children's stories weren't all roses and sunshine. They were scary, graphic, terrifying, usually involving diseases and orphans and murder. Think the fire in Bambi (I still get a little shaky thinking about that) times one-thousand. The article argued that stories like this were important for a child's development. When introduced to concepts like violence and death at an early age, children, apparently, are able to process these things more easily later in life rather than being completely blindsided by them. They SHOULD learn about these things as children in a safe way rather than being raised to believe that in life, everything is tied up in a nice little bow.
It was at this point that he looked at me and said "Yes... in real life, there is no happily ever after."
It struck me as more than a coincidence that this encounter occurred while I was reading Dave Cullen's Columbine - a book that I had been eager to read for months.
I know exactly where I was when I found out about the shooting in 1999 (which, Cullen argues, was actually a failed bombing meant to kill hundreds). I was in my grandmother's living room, sitting in her big leather chair that is now my big leather chair, watching the footage on her television that was as old as stonehenge.
I remember seeing all of the images, now burned into our consciousness, for the first time. Children running with their arms above their heads. Heads thrown back in sorrow. The boy in the window.
Almost immediately, the media (as we liberals like to call it) started providing answers to the collective American question mark surrounding the horror. "Oh, they were bullied." "Oh, they listened to Marilyn Manson." "Oh, they were nazis." "Oh they were goth kids." "Oh, they were racists."
Then the heroic stories started to pour out. Cassie Bernall declaring her faith in the face of death. A modern day martyr. Then came the songs, the sermons, the books, the testimonies.
Guess what? None of these things actually happened.
Cullen's book, rather than being an exposé on the inner-workings of twisted, bullied, outcast kids serves as a means to show the world what they really were - kids. One introverted, lacking self-confidence, with a desperate need to feel loved and accepted. The other, a textbook sociopath. Both were popular, well-liked, and intelligent. They were desperate to go to prom, to get dates, to fall in love. Both had close friends that were Christians and minorities. Neither of them were goths or racists.
But this just goes to show what we as Americans are trained to do when a tragic, unimaginable event takes place - we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and find the moral. Find the lesson learned. Find the happily ever after.
When I was about to turn 13, my older brother passed away. I thought that if I could find the lesson that this event was supposed to teach me (we Southern gals and our "sposed ta's"), I would be healed. If I could wrap it all up in a big bow, make it all make sense, it would be as if none of it had ever happened and my pain would vanish.
I took the standard "Well, if this had not happened to me then x and z would not have happened, either, so really, it was a good thing," approach. This made me feel "fixed," like I wasn't screwed up anymore, and didn't have to deal with all of the scary questions. I could now be the brave girl with her life completely together, better and wiser than she was pre-tragedy. At that age more than any other, you see the world in black and white terms. There is an answer to every question. Doubt is not okay. Doubt equals weakness.
Turns out, I'm just as confused now as I was then. The only difference is that now I'm able to admit it.
Later, I found an old brown paper bag with some of my brother's last wishes written on it. "Tell Amanda that it's okay to ask questions," it said. Only now do I fully understand what he was trying to tell me.
Usually when I blog about the books that I've read, I try to describe a moral or lesson that I've learned from them. But the very point of Cullen's book is that there aren't always morals. Trying to tie up all of the loose ends can sometimes cheapen the experience and nullify the humanity. It serves only to provide us mental relief - "okay, we've learned what that was about and now we can move on." But who wants to see their lost loved ones reduced to a lesson or a microcosm? What high schoolers want to see their school reduced to a symbol for what is wrong with young America? The truth is that truth - life - is more complicated than that, and reducing everything to something that you would read on a sampler doesn't do truth, or life, justice.
Our role as humans is to examine, to pursue, to use our minds and wrestle with what life hands us. Sometimes, there are no answers. Sometimes, there is no black and white. And only through embracing and accepting the question marks, the grey, can we see ourselves as we really are - complex, terrifying, beautiful, irrational creatures.
Like Ms. Stevie Nicks says, "Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? I don't know."
I don't know. And guess what? That's okay. show less
I just finished this book about an hour ago, and I should probably wait a few days to give a more thorough and thought out review, but...here goes.
This book was not quite as tough a read as the last Cullen book I read, [b:Columbine|5632446|Columbine|Dave Cullen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442939134l/5632446._SY75_.jpg|5803859], which destroyed me. To this day, working in a bookstore, if anyone asks for a horror recommendation, that is the book I show more point to because, to me, there is no greater horror than the fact that two kids went in and killed a bunch of their classmates, and America sat back and let it happen again...and again...and again.
This book builds on that same horror. Cullen has an obvious bias toward the kids that started the movement that grew out of the Parkland shooting, but honestly, I don't know how anyone could learn about both what they went through, and then their reaction to it, and not be awestruck.
I know "awesome" and "awestruck" are words that are used so often that they've lost their power, but I can only describe my admiration of these people as "awe". It's the only word that works.
There's a lot to unpack in this book. There's the actual event itself, coming mere months after the Las Vegas shooting, and something like the 81st one after Columbine, not two decades previously.
Let that number sit in your head. Columbine happened. Then eighty-one more shootings in schools. Then Parkland.
But...the Second Amendment. But...the NRA.
The outrage is so underwhelming compared to the cost. Throughout this book, I kept thinking, are these few kids the only sane ones in the room? Are they truly the only ones that understand the stakes here?
And then they draw in other like-minded but even more ignored factions, like Chicago. They go up against politicians—some, unbelievably, that have actually survived shootings themselves—who resolutely close their eyes, plug their ears, and spout the familiar refrains of "thoughts and prayers" and "it's a mental health issue, not a gun issue". It's infuriating, but it draws a very solid line under the fact that the politicians that are elected by their constituents do not actually work for them. They work for whomever yells the loudest from the upper ranks of their party, and often that message is whispered in their ears by those with the most money.
So yes, the initial outrage stems from the fact that 17 people—17 more people—died needlessly while everyone hid behind a 250 year old piece of paper, wrung their hands, and offered thoughts and prayers. But the outrage goes beyond that, scaling up to understand the sheer enormity of the issue at hand.
At one point, toward the end of the book, one of the March For Our Lives group says she hopes that the movement won't be needed by the time she's 30. It's a beautiful thought.
It's a terrifying book. It's an inspirational book. And it's just as much of a horror story as the first one, but it does cast some hope. show less
This book was not quite as tough a read as the last Cullen book I read, [b:Columbine|5632446|Columbine|Dave Cullen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442939134l/5632446._SY75_.jpg|5803859], which destroyed me. To this day, working in a bookstore, if anyone asks for a horror recommendation, that is the book I show more point to because, to me, there is no greater horror than the fact that two kids went in and killed a bunch of their classmates, and America sat back and let it happen again...and again...and again.
This book builds on that same horror. Cullen has an obvious bias toward the kids that started the movement that grew out of the Parkland shooting, but honestly, I don't know how anyone could learn about both what they went through, and then their reaction to it, and not be awestruck.
I know "awesome" and "awestruck" are words that are used so often that they've lost their power, but I can only describe my admiration of these people as "awe". It's the only word that works.
There's a lot to unpack in this book. There's the actual event itself, coming mere months after the Las Vegas shooting, and something like the 81st one after Columbine, not two decades previously.
Let that number sit in your head. Columbine happened. Then eighty-one more shootings in schools. Then Parkland.
But...the Second Amendment. But...the NRA.
The outrage is so underwhelming compared to the cost. Throughout this book, I kept thinking, are these few kids the only sane ones in the room? Are they truly the only ones that understand the stakes here?
And then they draw in other like-minded but even more ignored factions, like Chicago. They go up against politicians—some, unbelievably, that have actually survived shootings themselves—who resolutely close their eyes, plug their ears, and spout the familiar refrains of "thoughts and prayers" and "it's a mental health issue, not a gun issue". It's infuriating, but it draws a very solid line under the fact that the politicians that are elected by their constituents do not actually work for them. They work for whomever yells the loudest from the upper ranks of their party, and often that message is whispered in their ears by those with the most money.
So yes, the initial outrage stems from the fact that 17 people—17 more people—died needlessly while everyone hid behind a 250 year old piece of paper, wrung their hands, and offered thoughts and prayers. But the outrage goes beyond that, scaling up to understand the sheer enormity of the issue at hand.
At one point, toward the end of the book, one of the March For Our Lives group says she hopes that the movement won't be needed by the time she's 30. It's a beautiful thought.
It's a terrifying book. It's an inspirational book. And it's just as much of a horror story as the first one, but it does cast some hope. show less
Sorry, but pretty much everything you know about Columbine is probably wrong.
For example, you know the Trench Coat Mafia -- the one that shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold belonged to? Well, although there was such a thing, they didn't belong to it (and actually, they were dusters, not trench coats). Nor were Harris and Klebold bullied (they bullied others, actually), nor did they target jocks, or Christians, or anyone else (the shootings were random). And the martyr Cassie Bernall, who show more was murdered professing her belief in God? Nope, that one isn't true either (she didn't say a word before Harris killed her, nor did Harris ask her whether she believed in God).
Even more interesting, to me at least, was that the common wisdom about Harris and Klebold's parents -- they were too busy watching TV in the den to notice that their kids were amassing small armories upstairs -- also misses the mark. Harris and Klebold didn't build pipe bombs under the noses of their neglectful parents; quite to the contrary, their parents were pretty typical middle-class people trying to do their best. Harris, a full-blown psychopath at 17, managed to flimflam nearly everyone, including his strict father. And Klebold's parents, like many other parents, tried but failed to discern the depths of their son's depression.
Dave Cullen's book is painstakingly researched and extremely well-written; the accounts of the shootings are painful to read. As for the reportage, Cullen probes, but doesn't accuse, at least not unfairly. For example, while his portrayal of the Jefferson County Sheriff's office is less than flattering (with good reason), he's generally evenhanded in his criticism, acknowledging the nearly impossible circumstances that faced all the players in Littleton during and after the shooting. Cullen also fixes his eye on the media's behavior after the shooting -- most notably, the eagerness to make Cassie Bernall into a martyr, despite eyewitness testimony casting doubt on the story.
Very well done. show less
For example, you know the Trench Coat Mafia -- the one that shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold belonged to? Well, although there was such a thing, they didn't belong to it (and actually, they were dusters, not trench coats). Nor were Harris and Klebold bullied (they bullied others, actually), nor did they target jocks, or Christians, or anyone else (the shootings were random). And the martyr Cassie Bernall, who show more was murdered professing her belief in God? Nope, that one isn't true either (she didn't say a word before Harris killed her, nor did Harris ask her whether she believed in God).
Even more interesting, to me at least, was that the common wisdom about Harris and Klebold's parents -- they were too busy watching TV in the den to notice that their kids were amassing small armories upstairs -- also misses the mark. Harris and Klebold didn't build pipe bombs under the noses of their neglectful parents; quite to the contrary, their parents were pretty typical middle-class people trying to do their best. Harris, a full-blown psychopath at 17, managed to flimflam nearly everyone, including his strict father. And Klebold's parents, like many other parents, tried but failed to discern the depths of their son's depression.
Dave Cullen's book is painstakingly researched and extremely well-written; the accounts of the shootings are painful to read. As for the reportage, Cullen probes, but doesn't accuse, at least not unfairly. For example, while his portrayal of the Jefferson County Sheriff's office is less than flattering (with good reason), he's generally evenhanded in his criticism, acknowledging the nearly impossible circumstances that faced all the players in Littleton during and after the shooting. Cullen also fixes his eye on the media's behavior after the shooting -- most notably, the eagerness to make Cassie Bernall into a martyr, despite eyewitness testimony casting doubt on the story.
Very well done. show less
Who wants to read about Comumbine? We know the ending; we know that two high school kids were bullied to the breaking point, and literally went ballistic, shooting up their school. Or do we?
In Dave Cullen's Columbine, he painstakingly goes back to the writings of these two kids, Eric and Dylan, and begins to paint quite a different picture of what happened, who instigated the shooting, and why. Through countless interviews and many police reports, he pieces together an enthralling narrative. show more In spite of the incredible detail Cullen gives us, the writing is accessible and not too weighty.
Although I thought I'd never want to read another word on Columbine, Cullen proves to me how wrong I was. This was a fascinating look into the psyches of two very disturbed young men, and how they changed forever the lives of the people around them. show less
In Dave Cullen's Columbine, he painstakingly goes back to the writings of these two kids, Eric and Dylan, and begins to paint quite a different picture of what happened, who instigated the shooting, and why. Through countless interviews and many police reports, he pieces together an enthralling narrative. show more In spite of the incredible detail Cullen gives us, the writing is accessible and not too weighty.
Although I thought I'd never want to read another word on Columbine, Cullen proves to me how wrong I was. This was a fascinating look into the psyches of two very disturbed young men, and how they changed forever the lives of the people around them. show less
Lists
True Crime Books (1)
Books for Birute (1)
To Read (1)
Favourite Books (1)
Five star books (1)
True Crime (1)
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 6
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 4,815
- Popularity
- #5,214
- Rating
- 4.3
- Reviews
- 233
- ISBNs
- 44
- Languages
- 4
- Favorited
- 5
