Last Day on Earth
ISBN: 9780820342108
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / University of Georgia Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Campus violence; School shootings; Youth and violence; Mass murder;

On Valentine's Day 2008, Steve Kazmierczak killed five and wounded eighteen at Northern Illinois University, then killed himself. But he was an A student, a Deans' Award winner. How could this happen?

CNN could not get the story. The Chicago Tribune , Washington Post , and all others came up empty because Steve's friends and professors knew very little. He had reinvented himself in his final five years. But David Vann, investigating for Esquire, went back to Steve's high school and junior high friends, found a life perfectly shaped for mass murder, and gained full access to the entire 1,500 pages of the police files. The result: the most complete portrait we have of any school shooter. But Vann doesn't stop there. He recounts his own history with guns, contemplating a school shooting. This book is terrifying and true, a story you'll never forget.


David Vann is a U.S. author who will be featured at the Byron bay Writers' Festival 2015.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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