College Killers

The Good:
This book is good if you're looking for a easy to understand, general overview of some of the correlations between the killers instead of a deeper analysis of their motives. The author does not solely focus on the crimes which are constantly rehashed by today's media; he explores many of the past terrible shootings which are not as widely covered or known today. Mr. Kerr does a good job at giving a concise general overview of each killer's upbringing and potential factors leading to each crime. However, he does not really speculate or make assumptions–he just lays out the facts. With many of the killers' stories, he includes chilling quotes from the killers, giving a brief sobering insight into their minds.

The Bad:
If you know the history behind many of these crimes, you're not going to learn much. The book is simple in its style. The main issue I personally had with this book was that the author went in too many directions with the topic of school killings. He leads off the book and ends it with several stories which are more of war crimes or terrorism. The stories of these crimes don't really flow well with crimes like Columbine, Red Lake, or Texas Tower. Yes, all the types of crimes had to do with school shootings, but the mentality and motives of Islamic extremists are drastically different than individuals like Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold.