Reviews for What Every Rookie Superintendent Should Know: Surviving Year One

The average rating for What Every Rookie Superintendent Should Know: Surviving Year One based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-09-05 00:00:00 Joseph Bazan Better than Brooks, but not as good as Cullen, IMO. I have to admit that I held this guy to a higher standard, because he's an academic. That said, I think the book lacked a compelling thesis. The case histories are interesting, and very detailed. I learned more about the shootings other than Columbine, but reading the Harris / Klebold chapter didn't really teach me anything new, beyond that fact that Fast believes that Harris' unusual check structure may have made him a target for ridicule and been a compelling factor in his development. Ceremonial violence is present in the intro, but no attempts is made to circle back to this thesis in the conclusion. Instead, Fast uses the final chapter to rally support for stricter gun control. Even though I agree with him in principle, the ending feels forced, and is not what one expects from a book purporting to talk about "ceremonial violence". Maybe it's just a poorly chosen title. Maybe I expected too much. I did enjoy his exposition of why school shootings and gun violence in general has really only increased in the last half century and thinks it makes a nice counterpoint to claims of societal decay as causal factors. Other than that, nothing here was incredibly compelling for me.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-10-13 00:00:00 Glenn Smith I enjoyed this book for the reasons that I believe the author enjoyed writing it, which is that he has a morbid curiosity about school shootings. The psychological spin that this book was supposed to be given seems like a weak sauce excuse to show information about a strange occurrence rather than some sort of detached explanation of them so they can be prevented. The reason I gave this book four stars is because when Jonathan Fast describes the shootings they are very well written and that macabre joy that most humans get from details of horrific events is completely present. I hate to use that old hat about people not being able to help looking at car crashes but it is the same idea. It doesn't make you a bad person and I don't think that it makes Dr. Fast a bad person. I think that it only makes him one of an enormous crowd of humans who wonder about death and wish to stare directly at it without being taken by it. A book like this offers this opportunity. The book gives you a play by play complete with first person encounters with full descriptions of how the survivors felt if they were shot or what they were thinking and so on. Another thing that I realized while reading this is that while I am normally a person who reserves judgment that I hate the kids who do this. They are whiny, spineless little assholes who wish to gain attention and fame through the misery of others. Most of these school shooters laughed or smiled the entire time they were killing and terrorizing and when everything got real (IE police returned fire) they began crying or would throw down their weapon and say things like, "I'm done, I don't want to die." I want to express that I think the police should go in a mow the fucker down instead of waiting outside for the killer to emerge as they do in most instances while all the while the killer keeps on killing. I was also ashamed to learn that at the Columbine shootings the SWAP team didn't even enter the school till three hours after the shooting began and that was already two hours after the shooters had killed themselves. A truly pitiful response and that police force should be ashamed.