I was thrilled to learn more about this event in US History. It's always mentioned or referred to in history and pop culture but I always wondered why there wasn't a great book about it so I could learn more. Now there is and I have!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

I DNF'd this book because I didnt like the tone of the author, it felt extremely biased and pro-police and anti-protest.

On May 4, 1970, four students were killed and nine others were injured by Ohio National Guardsmen. The Guardsmen were sent to Kent State University in an attempt to quell students protesting the Vietnam War.

I was too young to understand why this tragic event occurred. Over the years I’ve looked for a book to provide information regarding what actually took place.

Mr. Vandemark’s book, Kent State: An American Tragedy, was exactly what I was looking for. He provides in great deal the facts behind the decisions and actions of both the protesters, the government and the guardsmen. On the day of the actual shooting, my stomach was in knots as I read the almost minute by minute details that resulted in the shooting. The aftermath was both heartbreaking and disturbing.

It’s hard not to think about Kent State with the current protests we are seeing on some university campuses..I frequently thought of this quote from George Santayana “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I received this book from W.W. Norton via Netgalley.

A comprehensive history of the violent clash between Vietnam protestors and the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio, May 4, 1970.

Well Documented History Of The Event. The massacre at Kent State happened when my parents were not quite 10 yrs old and still almost as long away from meeting. It wouldn't be until over a decade after this event when they wed, and I was born just a couple of years later. One uncle was already nearly 30 by the time of the massacre, and my youngest aunt was still in middle single digits at the time. The rest of my dozen or so aunts and uncles were somewhere in between, including at least a couple of them that were college age at the time, and one that fought in Vietnam in this era. (I'm not sure exactly when he was deployed there, but I *know* he went and did... something. He was a career Marine, beginning then.) All of this is a long way of saying that this is a history of events that preceded me, but which my direct family knew of at various ages of their own lives and saw how it affected each of them.

Thus, other than the barest of facts of "there was a protest, the National Guard got called in, and the Guard shot and killed a few students"... I never really knew about the details of this massacre before reading this book. I've never read any of the other histories, I've never really seen it covered much at all - and certainly not to this detail - in any other medium. So I can't really say if it has any "new" information about the event and its fallout.

What I *can* say about this book is that it is very well documented, with 23% of its text being official bibliography, and the extensive footnotes throughout the text probably adding another couple of percentage points, *maybe* up to an additional 5% or so. Bringing the total documentation here to somewhere in the 25-28% range, which is pretty solid in my extensive review work of the last several years - I've read books making far stronger claims than this that had far less documentation.

This book is also exceedingly detailed in its presentation of the events of those few days in May at this campus, giving brief biographical sketches of pretty well every single person named- be they victim, shooter, parent, lawyer, politician, commander, or anything else- and detailing with a fair degree of precision exactly where each person was in the periods before, during, and after the massacre. Up to and including which shooters had which guns pointing which directions. Indeed, one of the most tragic and explicit parts of this book is just how graphically the shots are described as they hit the 13 victims, and indeed there are some photographs of some of the bodies included in the text as well. So for those that get particularly squeamish about such details... you may want to skim over these bits. But also don't, because VanDeMark's presentation here, though excessively detailed, also does a tremendous job of showing just how tragic the event was.

To be clear, VanDeMark presents a remarkably *balanced* history as well, not really siding with either side in the debate as to who was at fault, simply presenting the available facts and showing how tragic it was that a group of young adults were all in this situation to begin with, from all of the varying sides. Indeed, perhaps this is the greatest overall strength of the text at hand - in its balance, we are allowed to get perhaps the truest picture available of what is known to have occurred and when, allowing the reader to decide for themselves, with their own biases, who was at fault and why.

After detailing the events of the day, VanDeMark closes the narrative with following the various efforts at criminal and civil trials of the shooters as well as various efforts to memorialize the events before moving on to how each of the survivors - family of the dead, the surviving victims, the shooters, and the various officials - handled the events of that weekend the rest of their lives, reaching right up into the 2020s.

Overall a truly detailed, graphic at times, and moving text, and one anyone with any interest at all in the subject should read.

Very much recommended.

Brian VanDeMark does a fantastic job of providing the necessary background information and added context surrounding the protest and subsequent shooting. This background info is critical to presenting the event in an unbiased fashion. The Author continues to provide additional context throughout the book through the footnotes, which while not necessary to the telling of the story, help the reader understand at a deeper level.

I believe the author did a great job at collecting and presenting the facts in a way that lets the readers draw their own conclusions. This includes both perspectives of the National Guardsman and the protesters that day and what they may have perceived as fact at that moment and the actual reality of the situation.

There are many equivalencies the reader can draw to the modern day political climate, I enjoyed the Author not directly calling these out and letting the reader draw these conclusions themselves while keeping focused on the historical analysis of the Kent State Tragedy.

I had not read a book by Brian VanDeMark prior to this book, I will definitely be looking into his other works. Brian's research and presentation was excellent and very easy to follow.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the Kent State Shooting.

Until I read a book a few months ago, I had never heard of this event. I’ll admit, I don’t know much about US history; it’s not something that particularly interests me, but I was interested when I saw Kent State: An American Tragedy on Netgalley.

As someone who knew almost nothing about it, I found this book to be very interesting. It covers the build-up, the event and the aftermath in a very clear manner. VanDeMark introduces the victims in a way that makes you completely sympathise with them. I was genuinely angry at the National Guard and the American legal system throughout this book.

As a history book, it is very well researched. It does present both sides of the argument, although it is very much slanted in favour of the students. There are interviews alongside the historical analysis which adds so much to the book. Most of the history books I read cover periods so long ago that you never get to read about what the people involved thought.

In a period where politics is a very divisive subject, it is very interesting to read about another period where politics was very divisive but the difference between then and now is that people were more forgiving of the actions of the people doing the shooting than the victims. It frustrated me to read that the general consensus at the time was that the ones who were injured or died were to blame because they were “Communists”. It’s a very American point of view.

As someone with almost no knowledge of the Kent State shootings, I found this book to be informative and rather emotional. It broke my heart to read what the victim’s families felt and it angered me that the victims were treated as though they were criminals. Like a lot of events of this type, it’s a highly emotive topic and this book deals with it sensitively.

I initially believed that this book would focus on the events of that day and the wider significance of the the shootings for the college and anti-war movement, but it was immediately clear that this book was much more than that. It is an examination of 1960s radicalism, the debate about use of force, and the subsequent struggle to find justice and meaning.
First, the book does a great job of placing the events of Kent State into context, something that I thought was more simple than it really was. To understand Kent State, VanDeMark makes the argument that one must grasp the nature of the growing radical movement, growing from SNCC in earlier years. The story is a complexity one that VanDeMark writes about with clarity and through a compelling narrative. The radical outgrowth of the counterculture, like the Underground, here play an important role. The growing leftist movement of the time found a spot at Kent State, showing that the shootings there were not a random act of violent chance, of the four students being ones unfortunately to die at the hands of trigger-nervous National Guardsmen.
Protests has been occurring on campus before the larger protests, with guardsmen called in and an ROTC building being burned. VanDeMark makes the case that at the time, no one would have thought that bringing troops in to quell the protests would have seemed too far out of the norm, especially for those on the other side. Even those marching that day were not surprised to once again seen uniforms standing across the quad. It's a significant component of the story that has been left out. To understand Kent State, VanDeMark shows that there is a larger explanation.
His descriptions and evidence from McManus is well-integrated into the book. It was shocking to read his accounts and to follow him trying to find peace with the past. At one point, he states that he believed that the guardsmen were to "fire in the air"
VanDeMark also connects this story to the larger political narrative, linking Kent State with the infamous Hardhat Riot. Tragically, those students who were confronted by construction workers in Manhattan were mourning the loss of a Kent State student. It makes the political gesturing following the event even more sobering.
This is a much needed narrative of an tragic event that has never quite received its due attention. VanDeMark fills in the gap of Vietnam and 1960s historiography, while showing that exploring the complexity in history can provide new avenues of connections between events in the past.

This timely nonfiction work is a valuable asset today to compare the events of May 4, 1970 that resulted in four student protester's deaths along with nine wounded. With the ongoing protests of 2024 and police intervention, it is fascinating to compare the anger and overall attitudes split in half of who was right and who was wrong at Kent State. Admirably the author includes pre-shooting background of riot destruction, the SDS on campus months before May 4 and how participates became involved with the mass protests. The work is balanced by interviews with surviving students, friends of the dead, parents of the dead and wounded along with members of the National Guard who pulled their triggers. Much of the book is documented with footnotes but oddly some dialouge sections are not cited which strains credibility (nurses and doctors telling wounded they also should of been killed). The book drags with the lengthy section of courtroom trials of the National Guard and how justice was sort of handed out with financial rewards. I liked how the author followed up with summaries of what happened to the wounded students and the parents of the deceased. For over 50 years, the events never left their minds.