Love Columbine? Readers share 26 books like Columbine...

By Dave Cullen,

Here are 26 books that Columbine fans have personally recommended if you like Columbine. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of In Cold Blood

Paul J. Heald Author Of Courting Death

From my list on capital punishment from an insider perspective.

Why am I passionate about this?

I came to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1988 to serve as a law clerk for a prominent federal judge (played by Martin Sheen in the movie Selma). I was convinced that the death penalty could be justly administered, and seeing Ted Bundy’s final appeal did little to change my mind. Subsequent cases, however, slowly worked a change in my attitude as I saw an execution’s effect on everyone involved in the process. My passion comes from this behind-the-scenes look at capital punishment in America.

Paul's book list on capital punishment from an insider perspective

Paul J. Heald Why did Paul love this book?

I was shaken to my core not only by Capote’s character study of two different yet partnered killers but also by his behind-the-scenes depiction of the death penalty process. For the first time, I began to see how capital punishment affects all those involved in its machinations.

By Truman Capote,

Why should I read it?

21 authors picked In Cold Blood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The chilling true crime 'non-fiction novel' that made Truman Capote's name, In Cold Blood is a seminal work of modern prose, a remarkable synthesis of journalistic skill and powerfully evocative narrative published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Controversial and compelling, In Cold Blood reconstructs the murder in 1959 of a Kansas farmer, his wife and both their children. Truman Capote's comprehensive study of the killings and subsequent investigation explores the circumstances surrounding this terrible crime and the effect it had on those involved. At the centre of his study are the amoral young killers Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, who, vividly…


Book cover of CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

Rick Emerson Author Of Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

From my list on exposés to keep you reading past midnight.

Why am I passionate about this?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the hidden histories of everyday things, especially in media and popular culture. (Who were those people on TV laugh tracks? Where did Muzak records come from?) A career in broadcasting only sharpened this interest, informing two decades of writing and performing.

Rick's book list on exposés to keep you reading past midnight

Rick Emerson Why did Rick love this book?

Like most Americans, I grew up hearing the codified version of the Charles Manson/Helter Skelter saga, so when I saw yet another Manson book, I had two thoughts: "This sounds like a cash-grab," and, "Ugh...it's probably some lunatic conspiracy theory."

Suffice it to say, I was wrong—dead wrong—on both counts. By now, there's a good chance you've heard the backstory to Tom O'Neill's book: how he came to write it, how long it took him to finish, and (most importantly) what he learned about the Manson case. If you don't know any of this, take my advice and go in blind. CHAOS will floor you.

By Tom O'Neill, Dan Piepenbring,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked CHAOS as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As featured on The Joe Rogan Experience
______________________________
A journalist's twenty-year obsession with the Manson murders leads to shocking new conspiracy theories about the FBI's involvement in this fascinating re-evaluation of one of the most infamous cases in American history.

Twenty years ago, reporting for a routine magazine piece about the infamous Manson murders, journalist Tom O'Neill didn't expect to find anything new. But the discovery of horrifying new evidence kick-started an obsession and his life's work. What had he unearthed and what did it mean: why was there surveillance by intelligence agents? Why did the police make these particular…


Book cover of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America

Pamela Haag Author Of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture

From my list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I got interested in American guns and gun culture through the backdoor. I’d never owned a gun, participated in gun control politics, or thought too much about guns at all. Guns might not have interested me—but ghosts did. I was beguiled by the haunting legend of the Winchester rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, who believed in the late 1800s that she was being tormented by the ghosts of all those killed by Winchester rifles. As I scoured the archives for rare glimpses of Sarah, however, it dawned on me that I was surrounded by boxes and boxes of largely unexplored sources about a much larger story, and secretive mystery: that of the gun industry itself.

Pamela's book list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture

Pamela Haag Why did Pamela love this book?

I admire this book for its measured erudition on a topic (guns) that the author feels is the most formative cultural chasm in the US. Winkler, a renowned legal scholar, uses the 2008 Supreme Court Heller decision that enshrined the second amendment as an individual right to bear arms as the touchstone for a riveting and more wide-ranging investigation of the history of gun rights as well as gun control laws. Winkler finds historical precedents for the concept of an individual right (if not a mandate, in some cases) to bear arms.

However, what I found most surprising is Winkler’s account of the equally sturdy and deeply-rooted history of gun control and regulation. This revises the popular wisdom that gun control, essentially, has no history—that the US was a land of unfettered gun-toting and gun-owning that was only later thwarted by modern, liberal gun restrictions. On the contrary, by the…

By Adam Winkler,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Gunfight as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Gunfight is a timely work examining America's four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. In this definitive and provocative history, Adam Winkler reveals how guns-not abortion, race, or religion-are at the heart of America's cultural divide. Using the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller-which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation's capital-as a springboard, Winkler brilliantly weaves together the dramatic stories of gun-rights advocates and gun-control lobbyists, providing often unexpected insights into the venomous debate that now cleaves our nation.


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Rick Emerson Author Of Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

From my list on exposés to keep you reading past midnight.

Why am I passionate about this?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the hidden histories of everyday things, especially in media and popular culture. (Who were those people on TV laugh tracks? Where did Muzak records come from?) A career in broadcasting only sharpened this interest, informing two decades of writing and performing.

Rick's book list on exposés to keep you reading past midnight

Rick Emerson Why did Rick love this book?

That this book even exists is amazing. By the end, it seems less like an exposé than an all-in wager on the power of truth. The final few chapters alone are worth the price of admission, and while Alex Gibney's documentary of the same name is well worth watching, Lawrence Wright's book is—for now, and perhaps for all time—the definitive look at a secretive world.

By Lawrence Wright,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Going Clear as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST •  From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower comes “an utterly necessary story” (The Wall Street Journal) that pulls back the curtain on the church of Scientology: one of the most secretive organizations at work today. • The Basis for the HBO Documentary.

Scientology presents itself as a scientific approach to spiritual enlightenment, but its practices have long been shrouded in mystery. Now Lawrence Wright—armed with his investigative talents, years of archival research, and more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—uncovers…


Book cover of Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry That Radicalized America

Pamela Haag Author Of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture

From my list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I got interested in American guns and gun culture through the backdoor. I’d never owned a gun, participated in gun control politics, or thought too much about guns at all. Guns might not have interested me—but ghosts did. I was beguiled by the haunting legend of the Winchester rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, who believed in the late 1800s that she was being tormented by the ghosts of all those killed by Winchester rifles. As I scoured the archives for rare glimpses of Sarah, however, it dawned on me that I was surrounded by boxes and boxes of largely unexplored sources about a much larger story, and secretive mystery: that of the gun industry itself.

Pamela's book list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture

Pamela Haag Why did Pamela love this book?

Busse offers the new perspective of an insider—an erstwhile gun executive. I’ve always held that the gun industry has gotten far too little attention historically, and that commercial forces substantially helped to create and then maintain the American gun mystique and culture long after the “frontier” closed. Busse’s work shows just how explicitly the gun industry today, since 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, relies on “manufactured fear” to push products. The book teems with examples of fear marketing, including endorsements from social media celebrities that created a new breed of “couch commandos,” steeped in the “glorification of violence, the utter rejection of political correctness, and the freewheeling masculinity and objectification of women.” And in Busse’s view it’s not just that gun marketing has changed, but that the gun industry has transformed American culture itself, radicalizing it and shifting it toward authoritarianism.

We’ve seen and felt this malevolence of…

By Ryan Busse,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Gunfight as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A former firearms executive pulls back the curtain on America's multibillion-dollar gun industry, exposing how it fostered extremism and racism, radicalizing the nation and bringing cultural division to a boiling point.
 
As an avid hunter, outdoorsman, and conservationist–all things that the firearms industry was built on–Ryan Busse chased a childhood dream and built a successful career selling millions of firearms for one of America’s most popular gun companies.

But blinded by the promise of massive profits, the gun industry abandoned its self-imposed decency in favor of hardline conservatism and McCarthyesque internal policing, sowing irreparable division in our politics and society.…


Book cover of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Pamela Haag Author Of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture

From my list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I got interested in American guns and gun culture through the backdoor. I’d never owned a gun, participated in gun control politics, or thought too much about guns at all. Guns might not have interested me—but ghosts did. I was beguiled by the haunting legend of the Winchester rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, who believed in the late 1800s that she was being tormented by the ghosts of all those killed by Winchester rifles. As I scoured the archives for rare glimpses of Sarah, however, it dawned on me that I was surrounded by boxes and boxes of largely unexplored sources about a much larger story, and secretive mystery: that of the gun industry itself.

Pamela's book list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture

Pamela Haag Why did Pamela love this book?

Rather than reprising hackneyed debates between the usual political actors—for example, gun control liberals versus gun rights libertarians—this book argues that American ‘gun culture’ was never really about hunting, freedom fighters, the militia, or constitutional liberty in the first place. From the country’s inception, Dunbar-Ortiz describes, guns were about racial subjugation, the genocide of Native Americans, the enforcement of enslavement, and the privileges and wealth that flowed from this subordination to the dominating class.

For Dunbar-Ortiz, the use of guns for subjugation and the expropriation of labor, land, and wealth from non-white populations wasn’t lamentably incidental to the American gun culture but at its very heart. I especially appreciate how the author shifts the terrain of the gun discussion: This book left me wondering if we spend too much time thinking about what guns have meant in the abstract and too little about what guns have done in the specific—the…

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Loaded as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's Loaded is like a blast of fresh air. She is no fan of guns or of our absurdly permissive laws surrounding them. But she does not merely take the liberal side of the familiar debate."--Adam Hochschild, The New York Review of Books

"If . . . anyone at all really wants to 'get to the root causes of gun violence in America,' they will need to start by coming to terms with even a fraction of what Loaded proposes."-Los Angeles Review of Books

"Her analysis, erudite and unrelenting, exposes blind spots not just among conservatives, but, crucially, among…


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Book cover of Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism

Grand Old Unraveling by John Kenneth White,

It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.

Long…

Book cover of Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline

Pamela Haag Author Of The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture

From my list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture.

Why am I passionate about this?

I got interested in American guns and gun culture through the backdoor. I’d never owned a gun, participated in gun control politics, or thought too much about guns at all. Guns might not have interested me—but ghosts did. I was beguiled by the haunting legend of the Winchester rifle heiress Sarah Winchester, who believed in the late 1800s that she was being tormented by the ghosts of all those killed by Winchester rifles. As I scoured the archives for rare glimpses of Sarah, however, it dawned on me that I was surrounded by boxes and boxes of largely unexplored sources about a much larger story, and secretive mystery: that of the gun industry itself.

Pamela's book list on new or surprising on American guns and gun culture

Pamela Haag Why did Pamela love this book?

Jennifer Carlson, Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline, does the rare thing of actually asking gun owners (she interviewed sixty of them) why they have guns, and what guns mean to them. As a sociologist, Carlson immersed herself in the “gun carry culture”—Americans who carry guns with them in everyday life, which is a new wrinkle in American gun culture. I was surprised by many of her findings and insights, and in some cases I was struck by their elegance; for example, Americans carry guns because they feel the US is “in decline” because of social chaos, and “guns are perceived as solving the problem” of that chaos.

What’s new and surprising here, and that I especially appreciated, is that Carlson in her own words “does something different” in this book, rejecting both the “gun politics” narrative that the “gun culture is an affirmation…

By Jennifer Carlson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Citizen-Protectors as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From gang- and drug-related shootings to mass shootings in schools, shopping centers, and movie theatres, reports of gun crimes fill the headlines of newspapers and nightly news programs. At the same time, a different kind of headline has captured public attention: a steady surge in pro-gun sentiment among Americans. A Gallup poll conducted just a month after the Newtown school shootings found that 74% of Americans oppose a ban on hand-guns, and at least 11 million
people now have licenses to carry concealed weapons as part of their everyday lives. Why do so many Americans not only own guns but…


Book cover of Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

Rick Emerson Author Of Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries

From my list on exposés to keep you reading past midnight.

Why am I passionate about this?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the hidden histories of everyday things, especially in media and popular culture. (Who were those people on TV laugh tracks? Where did Muzak records come from?) A career in broadcasting only sharpened this interest, informing two decades of writing and performing.

Rick's book list on exposés to keep you reading past midnight

Rick Emerson Why did Rick love this book?

Having lived in Utah for several years, I went into this knowing a fair amount about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: its history, its leaders, its tangled (to put it mildly) relationship with polygamy, and its equally tangled dealings with the federal government. And still, Jon Krakauer's true-crime masterwork was (no pun intended) a revelation. It gripped me from its very first page.

By Jon Krakauer,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Under the Banner of Heaven as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. Now an the acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU.

“Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. 

At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty,…


Book cover of A Fever In The Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them

David J. Krajicek Author Of Charles Manson

From my list on the minds of true-crime killers and convicts.

Why am I passionate about this?

The newspaper crime beat sunk its talons into my flesh nearly 50 years ago and has never let go. As Shakespeare knew, the best stories—about love and hate, life and death, good and evil—can be found on the daily police blotter. I’ve spent my career writing about those tales in newspapers, online, and in books. My interest has never really been the gore—a tally of the knife wounds or the volume of blood lost. No, my fascination is the mind and the psychology of the criminal, who always believes he is smarter than the rest of us—and is generally proven wrong.

David's book list on the minds of true-crime killers and convicts

David J. Krajicek Why did David love this book?

The bad guy at the center of Egan’s book has something in common with every scoundrel who somehow manages to talk a sucker out of his last dime: He was adept at the dark art of flimflam. D.C. Stephenson, a smooth-talking serial sex predator, showed up in Indiana during the Roaring Twenties and was soon handed the keys to the government, setting in motion a master plan for a Ku Klux Klan takeover of American politics.

Egan’s story left me flabbergasted: Even as a longtime journalist who has done my share of writing about the KKK, I was not aware of the depth of the racist organization’s reach into our country’s business and political establishment a century ago.

By Timothy Egan,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked A Fever In The Heartland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"With narrative elan, Egan gives us a riveting saga of how a predatory con man became one of the most powerful people in 1920s America, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, with a plan to rule the country—and how a grisly murder of a woman brought him down. Compelling and chillingly resonant with our own time." —Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile

“Riveting…Egan is a brilliant researcher and lucid writer.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

A historical thriller by the Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of…


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Book cover of Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink

Benghazi! A New History of the Fiasco that Pushed America and its World to the Brink by Ethan Chorin,

Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of…

Book cover of Blow: How a Small-Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All

David J. Krajicek Author Of Charles Manson

From my list on the minds of true-crime killers and convicts.

Why am I passionate about this?

The newspaper crime beat sunk its talons into my flesh nearly 50 years ago and has never let go. As Shakespeare knew, the best stories—about love and hate, life and death, good and evil—can be found on the daily police blotter. I’ve spent my career writing about those tales in newspapers, online, and in books. My interest has never really been the gore—a tally of the knife wounds or the volume of blood lost. No, my fascination is the mind and the psychology of the criminal, who always believes he is smarter than the rest of us—and is generally proven wrong.

David's book list on the minds of true-crime killers and convicts

David J. Krajicek Why did David love this book?

Do you like to root for the bad guy? Then George Jung, the central figure in this true crime classic about the Columbia-to-America cocaine snowstorm of the 1980s, might just be your man.

Author Porter weaves a brisk, vivid narrative about his anti-hero Jung, a likable goofball stoner who stumbles into the big-time international coke biz and isn’t smart enough to get out (and he had his chances, lord knows).

Johnny Depp did a memorable job of portraying Jung in the film version of Blow (released in 2001), but the Porter’s book takes the reader three or four levels deeper into the absurdities of Jung’s narcotics hellscape.

By Bruce Porter,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Blow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

BLOW is the unlikely story of George Jung's roller coaster ride from middle-class high school football hero to the heart of Pable Escobar's Medellin cartel-- the largest importer of the United States cocaine supply in the 1980s. Jung's early business of flying marijuana into the United States from the mountains of Mexico took a dramatic turn when he met Carlos Lehder, a young Colombian car thief with connections to the then newly born cocaine operation in his native land. Together they created a new model for selling cocaine, turning a drug used primarily by the entertainment elite into a massive…


Book cover of In Cold Blood
Book cover of CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
Book cover of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America

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