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    Parkland: Birth of a Movement
    Parkland: Birth of a Movement
    Parkland: Birth of a Movement
    Audiobook10 hours

    Parkland: Birth of a Movement

    Written by Dave Cullen

    Narrated by Dave Cullen and Robert Fass

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    About this audiobook

    A New York Times Bestseller

    ""A moving petition to America that it not look away from the catastrophes at Columbine, Newtown, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and, yes, Parkland. It succeeds as an in-depth report about the “generational campaign” in the aftermath of the Parkland tragedy, a bi-partisan movement advocating serious gun reform.” — Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    The acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Columbine offers an intimate, deeply moving account of the extraordinary teenage survivors who became activists and pushed back against the NRA and feckless Congressional leaders—inspiring millions of Americans to join their grassroots #neveragain movement.

    Nineteen years ago, Dave Cullen was among the first to arrive at Columbine High, even before most of the SWAT teams went in. While writing his acclaimed account of the tragedy, he suffered two bouts of secondary PTSD. He covered all the later tragedies from a distance, working with a cadre of experts cultivated from academia and the FBI, but swore he would never return to the scene of a ghastly crime.

    But in March 2018, Cullen went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because something radically different was happening. In nearly twenty years witnessing the mass shootings epidemic escalate, he was stunned and awed by the courage, anger, and conviction of the high school’s students. Refusing to allow adults and the media to shape their story, these remarkable adolescents took control, using their grief as a catalyst for change, transforming tragedy into a movement of astonishing hope that has galvanized a nation.

    Cullen unfolds the story of Parkland through the voices of key participants whose diverse personalities and outlooks comprise every facet of the movement. Instead of taking us into the mind of the killer, he takes us into the hearts of the Douglas students as they cope with the common concerns of high school students everywhere—awaiting college acceptance letters, studying for mid-term exams, competing against their athletic rivals, putting together the yearbook, staging the musical Spring Awakening, enjoying prom and graduation—while moving forward from a horrific event that has altered them forever.

    Deeply researched and beautifully told, Parkland is an in-depth examination of this pivotal moment in American culture—and an up-close portrait that reveals what these extraordinary young people are like. As it celebrates the passion of these astonishing students who are making history, this spellbinding book is an inspiring call to action for lasting change.

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 12, 2019
    ISBN9780062893901
    Author

    Dave Cullen

    Dave Cullen is the author of New York Times Bestseller Columbine. Cullen has also written for New York Times, BuzzFeed, Vanity Fair, Politico Magazine, Times of London, New Republic, Newsweek, Guardian, Washington Post, Daily Beast, Slate, Salon, The Millions, Lapham's Quarterly, and NPR's On The Media. 

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    Reviews for Parkland

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      Columbine was incredible, but Parkland feels rushed, often uninteresting, and the writing feels sophomoric.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed knowing the stories of some of the victims, of how the students felt when, after, and now, the "March of Our lives Day", that children can move the world. Parkland Students. Very well written.
    • 3/5
      2.5 Not as thorough or in-depth as I was expecting after the colossal showing of Cullen’s Columbine.
    • 4/5
      This is a story simultaneously chilling and uplifting. Following the events of yet another school shooting, a group of students band together to send a message to their government. Their platform is intentionally nonpartisan, and their demands are eminently reasonable. This is the story of how a grassroots movement took form, driven by the passionate players who were still reeling from the trauma of their experiences. They bravely put themselves in the spotlight and became the target of accolades and death threats.This is a moving story and one that bring both shame and hope. It is a troubled time we find ourselves in, and it is unfortunate that children too young to vote feel that they are the only ones who will take any action to protect innocent lives. They find themselves on the world stage - being the adults they want to see in the world.
    • 4/5
      A compelling and comprehensive study in how a social justice movement is born and sustained in the wake of tragedy. I learned a lot about the Parkland kids and what helped the gun safety movement grow.
    • 3/5
      This started out strong and I'm really lost my interest halfway. I I just don't find the minutiae of the lives of teenagers and the way they relate to each other remotely interesting.
    • 5/5
      A breathtaking, clear and accurate account of what happened in the aftermath of the Parkland shooting. I applaud the teens and young adults who decided to take a step into the limelight. Most adults aren't brave enough to take on Congress or even their own state legislature, and these teens did it without a second thought. And they inspired many others to follow in their footsteps.
    • 3/5
      This book follows closely in the never-ending, easily resolved drama that is American school mass murders.

      I say easily resolved, as it’s no secret that the fewer guns one has access to, and the fewer class differences there are in the society that one lives in, the fewer mass murders there are. That’s simplifying things, but not much.

      The Pulse shooting in 2016 seems to have been the point when millions of Americans decided they couldn’t bear it anymore. Nothing ever changed, except the body count, which kept rising. The Onion famously reruns the same headline after every time: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”

      Cullen follows youths who have somehow been, geographically and/or physically speaking, been affected by the mass-murder in Parkland in 2018.

      Sadly, Columbine ignited the school-shooter era, which we’re still dealing with, and it’s getting much worse. While keeping top-ten lists of these massacres is part of the problem, it’s notable that Columbine no longer even makes that list.

      What differed reactions of the mass murder in Columbine—which Cullen excellently covered in his book “Columbine“—is that what happened at Parkland sparked hundreds of movements of sorts, by youth.

      Youth directed political strife, started organisations with the sole purpose to ban semi-automatic rifles, to spark true political change, to prevent themselves from being slaughtered.

      And that’s mainly what this book is about; while Cullen’s “Columbine” focused on the perpetrators, this book is all about the youth and their organisation towards changing the future.

      After two decades of research based on the voices of victims and victim advocates, and responses from the best minds in academia, psychology, criminology, and journalism, plausible roads out seem clear: major reforms to the easy access to deadly weapons and ammunition; a targeted approach to mental health in the form of screening for teen depression, every semester, in every high school in the country; and a major change in the media’s coverage of these killers, which lionizes them in the eyes of unraveling future perps. It may take a combination of these strategies, and of course the smart money is on doing all three. Yet in twenty years, America alone has lost 683 lives in 81 mass shootings, and we’ve done virtually nothing. Concealed-carry and a host of other laws have made quick access to guns easier and easier. The “mental health” component has always been addressed with that absurdly broad label, so of course we have failed to move an inch. Only the media angle has begun to show some progress, or at least the early rumblings, in which journalists are beginning to accept our role in the star-making cycle.

      Sadly, this book does not delve deeply, or even semi-deeply into what could be done to stop what truly erects mass murder in schools in the USA; that is what I believe. Access to weapons is one thing, but weapons do not create the chaos that leads to mass murder; I’m not pro-NRA or anything like it, and I firmly believe that the NRA is a destructive organisation that should best be cancelled, and weapons be demolished. However, weapons will always exist.

      Senate president Joe Negron opened his session to the media. He was joined by two other Republican Senate leaders. The senators were respectful and engaging, seemed genuinely concerned, and answered every question—but most of them evasively. The questions were dignified, as instructed, but the reactions were spontaneous and blunt. “Why should anyone have an assault rifle?” a boy asked. “That’s an issue that we’re reviewing,” Negron said. The students groaned.

      “I’ll take two more questions,” Senator Negron said. “This young lady, and the young man in the red tie.” When his turn came, the red-tie boy stood and spoke more sternly than his peers. “You said you would look at things closely. Are you willing to actually act on anything? Yes or no?” Senator Negron gave a long, meandering answer: he was proud of the senate, they were working on mental health . . . No real answer.

      The planning phase typically lasts weeks or months. In the case of the deeply depressed, it typically comes at the tail end of a far longer downward spiral into depression. The definitive study on school shooters reported that nearly 95 percent of perpetrators planned the attack in advance, just over half spent a month or more doing so, and some planned for an entire year. The Secret Service conducted that investigation in 2004, and studied every targeted school shooting in the United States until that point: thirty-seven incidents from 1974 to 2000. The FBI did a companion study with similar findings and has recently done more exhaustive work on the broader cohort of mass shooters. In all cases, same result. The Secret Service report made a startling statement, backed by all the others: “There is no accurate or useful ‘profile’ of students who engaged in targeted school violence.” Shooters encompass all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors, parenting styles, and so forth. However, most of the major studies have indicated that mental health disorders play a big factor. The FBI’s June 2018 study examined “concerning behaviors” in major mass shooters, and only one of those broke 50 percent: mental health issues afflicted 62 percent of all shooters studied. Depression, anxiety, and paranoia were the issues most frequently cited.

      The best part about this book is summed up by the author:

      “Adults will always think of ten thousand reasons why you can’t do something,” Dr. Ley said. “Kids won’t do that. That’s what’s glorious about young people: the still-developing impulse control. They see something, they see a cause, and they say, ‘I’m going to do what’s right. You’re not going to stop me.’”

      All in all, this book is a good job on kids who rush to danger, willing to make changes that affect humans for real. Cullen’s capturing of the urgency is the best part. Having said that, I truly wish that Cullen would have delved more into the thoughts and processes that drove the youth which rallied for true change, and this book would have been much better for it.
    • 4/5
      Unlike in his book Columbine, Cullen does not try to get into the mind of the Parkland killer. He is never named and mostly ignored. This book is about the aftermath. This is about the children, the young adults, we failed to protect. They took it upon themselves to try to bring about change to protect themselves and to protect all of us.In the few days it took me to read this book, two Parkland survivors committed suicide. One father of a Sandy Hook victim committed suicide. These people were victims as much as the original victims of murder. There are still many living victims who will survive, but their lives will never be the same.Although this book had an entirely different perspective than Columbine, it was interesting. I applaud these young people who think the best way to go on is to fight the system that allows these mass murders to continue. I also applaud those who choose not to fight that particular fight, or to fight it less forcefully. Every victim, and that includes far more than the people directly in the situation, has to do what is best for that individual.I understand that the book focuses so much on the post-Parkland activists that there is resentment or mixed emotions among the others. The author does tell in detail what the activists were doing and how they presented themselves to the world and what they tried to hide. He never implies that all should react the same. In fact, he goes out of his way to not imply that. A book well worth reading if you care at all about children or common sense gun control.On another note, I have nothing but contempt and disgust for those deniers who harass the survivors and their families. It takes a special kind of person to spew lies and hate like they do.
    • 5/5
      Dave Cullen wrote the definitive book on Columbine. In this book we discover the price he paid during his ten years of researching that tragedy. After the school shooting in Parkland, Cullen voluntarily dove in to write another tale, though this one is different in many ways. These teens grew up will various drills in school in order to deal with a potential active shooter situation, something that was never anticipated when Columbine happened. Perhaps because they were better prepared and better educated on this topic, many of the teens involved had a different response. Some started on the road to activism even as bullets were still flying. Perhaps the time is also right, but whatever the reasons, these teenagers are having a lasting impact on this important topic, taking on the NRA and showing how we can all come together to be a better nation. Kudos to Cullen for all of his time with these teens and bringing their story to print. More kudos to these kids and their families for saying "Never Again." I know I voted in 2018 with gun control as one of my focuses for my vote.