Day of Reckoning: The Massacre at Columbine High School [Paperback]

John F. Murphy (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Xlibris Corp (August 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401019315
• ISBN-13: 978-1401019310
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,024,527 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Falls Short, October 3, 2002

By 

Anthony Dobbins (Midwest, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Day of Reckoning: The Massacre at Columbine High School (Paperback)

The book begins with the assumption that the underlying reasons/processes that led to the massacre at Columbine high school by Harris and Kleebold would be focus of the material. Instead, the author loses site of the issues with long and often irrelevant passages about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the book. Murphy goes on and on about the unmeaningful details of Hitlers Third Reich and neo-nazism. From the large amounts of information about these topics one would get the impression that the books was more about the Nazi's rise to power and the tragedies of World War II then about Columbine. There are several generalizations in his arguments regarding the relationship between violence, the Internet, and video games that provide no foundation to motivating these individuals to kill. Parents take away the video games from children or they will be transformed into murders! I was interested in the so called "jock elite" influence in the teenage culture. This is the only are where I felt he made valid points to support his assumptions.

There is no continuity in moving from subject to subject leaving the reader frustrated at times. You begin to think he is about to make a relevant point but are disappointed by the lack of cohesion in the writing. Points are repeated unnecessarily and the grammatical errors are annoying. Overall the book tries to capsulate very complex issues into very general terms with little or no supporting evidence. This books "falls short" in many ways of the initial expectations you have when start to read it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid this book, October 5, 2002

By 

Shahir A. Ahang (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Day of Reckoning: The Massacre at Columbine High School (Paperback)

Day of Reckoning was a book, at least according to the title, about the Columbine High School shooting which took place in April of 1999. The perpetrators, Erik Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting rampage in which they killed and wounded a number of their classmates. Murphy tried very hard to present as much background information into the shootings in order to explain the motive behind the shootings. Unfortunately, there was just too much information presented which at times seemed very difficult to follow the subject matter. For example, there was just too much information about the Internet, modems, and computers as well as way too much information on certain music bands which Erik and Dylan were fans of. Murphy also wrote way too many personal comments in order to drive his point. In my opinion, a book such as this should present the facts in a scholastic and unbiased manner. Murphy clearly did not just present facts but rather mix some facts with his personal opinions. Another big problem was that there way too many grammatical errors in the text. Whoever was responsible for grammatical correctness of the book certainly failed their job.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Day of Reckoning - Run far far away!, September 26, 2002

By 

E. Reed "sassifrass13" (Ashford, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Day of Reckoning: The Massacre at Columbine High School (Paperback)

When I first picked up this book and read the cover, I had the impression that it would be filled with revealing facts and sleuthful connections related to the Columbine shootings. I must say, with great disappointment and more than a little disgust, that this book contains very few facts of any relevance to the event at hand. In addition, the author does a magnificent job of proving his profound ignorance in relation to several "leading" topics in his book: the Internet, teenage culture, and modern music, movies & video games. I would only recommend one read this book if they are seeking a strong example of how NOT to write. Aside from the numerous spelling and grammatical errors, I found this book to be filled with highly subjective and poorly stated views, which clearly revealed the author's ignorance on the subjects he claims to approach in a factual manner. The various facts that have been presented in this book, are only loosely connected to the main topic, and do nothing to support what are obviously the author's highly subjective opinions, presented in abundance.