“Interesting and hard to put down, mentioning many cases of teen murder that were new to me, but I have to say that overall the feel of the book was superficial and unfocused. In a way, this book is a great overview of the wrongheaded ideas people use to explain school shooting and other dreadful kid behavior. He describes the horrible lives these kids have that drove them to violence, then tries to blame video games and TV shows for what finally happened, as if it were "The Sopranos" that got Jane Bautista killed rather than her years of battereing and terrorizing nher sons. One very serious oversight was the author's failure to mention the names of most of the victims, as if only the killers could be of any real interest. He bizarrely seems to say, more than once, that the key to handling school violence is for more private citizens to have concealed-carry gun permits. His other answer is getting these kids to church, which is unlikely to be a helpful option in families characterized by child basttering, sexual violence and addiction. Also, he overlooks the well-known fact that many Satanic serial killers first got interested in Satan by going to church, Richard Ramirez being the best-known example. The author apologizes over and over for even mentioning icky subjects like "Grand Theft Auto" and the lyrics of Marilyn Manson, while stressing that they are (in his opinion) key precursors n the pathology of violent youth. He manages to rather miss the point, that kids who feel loved and accepted are very unlikely to turn to Satanism or the KKK to find a place to belong, or to take Manson's music as seriously as a kid whose life is going better. He rightly points to school bullying as a major precipitant of school shootings, but does not go beyond saying "this should not be allowed." Some of the writing is amazingly clumsy ("Mental illness can consist of...cranial indentation" was my personal favorite). Cheesiest of all was the boxed announcement at the end of every chapter, saying, in effect: "IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN THIS SUBJECT, WATCH FOR PHIL'S NEXT BOOK, COMING SOON!!!"”
