Newton: An American Tragedy (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
Neither as comprehensive nor as revealing as Dave Cullen's book Columbine, a work this book evokes in its subject matter and tone and even its cover art. Cullen's book had the advantage of a decade's distance from the event, which allowed for greater access to motivations and implications than Lysiak was able to have in writing this book a year after the murders. As such, this book suffers in the same areas that made Cullen's book so great. Lysiak is able to tell us little about the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, beyond his obsessions with guns and violent video games, his extreme introversion and his likely autism. It's a lot of detail, but Lanza is never really understandable to the reader like Klebold and Harris were in Cullen's superior book. Similarly, the reader never really understands why Lanza's mother, who is seemingly so involved and concerned with her troubled son's well being, would continue to illegally furnish him with guns. What we know of Mrs. Lanza is from emails to her friends and their recollections, but the sense is that there's much more to the story. Mrs. Lanza's other son, for example, would certainly have been more privy to what was going on in the house, yet he is glaringly absent from most of this account.The book does have its strengths, however. Its descriptions of the lives of the innocent victims, of the act itself and of the aftermath of the massacre are all effective. It's not easy to read. Also, Lysiak does an admirable job of maintaining some journalistic objectivity, never advocating or placing blame on any particular social evil or political hot-button issue. He does spend a lot of time describing the weapons used in the event, but he is also quick to argue that gun control itself may not have made much of a difference here because Lanza's mother was breaking the law anyway in supplying his weapons. Similarly, Lysiak gives equal time to summarizing arguments in favor of and against mental illness as a factor in the killings. It's admirable to be so unbiased, but, at the same time, it's not always so interesting to read something that never really commits or takes a stand. I've always found bias to be an exaggerated problem in writing, and its absence here is not as great as one might think. I think the main issue with this book is that it's come too soon. The author clearly wanted to be the first to cover the 'biggest' (in terms of public outrage) school massacre, which has caused one of the biggest flaws - there just is not enough information around yet.Look back to one of the first high school shootings - Columbine, which happened more than 10 years ago now and information id's still filtering out and views/details are still changing (in fact one of the biggest sources of information for that case. the basement files is still many years away from release).I think the author has done the best he can with just one year off time passed, bit it still feels very much like its a collection of stories that are already available (and not necessarily true) via many other sources.This book has inadvertently opened up one other element to this story (although not covered in this book), that being that there is a growing discussion from many different corners that the whole shooting may be one big hoax. I am not going to comment on that though as I have not looked into it in any detail yet.My biggest gripe though was when the author briefly covered some of the other school massacres, specifically Columbine where he states that the reason that event took place was because Eric & Dylan had there computer game access revoked by their parents - FALSE!!!Overall I think the author is trying to re-create Dave Cullen's book on Columbine, but he falls very short of the mark. This book is worth a read but don't expect anything ground breaking.
What do You think about Newton: An American Tragedy (2013)?
Beautifully written an indescribably heartbreaking, everyone should read this book.
—Naynayluvsyou
An extended news report, mostly summary of information previously reported.
—kaysavo
