READ EXCERPT: 'Columbine'

Oprah says "Columbine" is one of this summer's best books.

ByABC News via logo
June 17, 2009, 4:22 PM

June 18, 2009— -- "Good Morning America" gave you a glimpse at some of O Magazine's top summer reading selections today.

It's been a decade since the shocking school massacre at a Colorado high school stunned the nation, and journalist Dave Cullen's book, "Columbine," offers vivid details about one of the most disturbing days in the nation's history.

The book's narrative also does some myth-busting and suggests the killers weren't social outcasts; there was no broader conspiracy and authorities should have known.

Read an excerpt of this book below and check out other books on the list.

Click here to read an excerpt from "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies."
Click here to read an excerpt from "Stormy Weather."
Click here to read an excerpt from "Provenance."

PART I

1.Mr. D

He told them he loved them. Each and every one of them. He spoke without notes but chose his words carefully. Frank DeAngelis waited out the pom-pom routines, the academic awards, and the student-made videos. After an hour of revelry, the short, middle-aged man strode across the gleaming basketball court to address his student body. He took his time. He smiled as he passed the marching band, the cheerleaders, and the Rebels logo painted beneath flowing banners proclaiming recent sports victories. He faced two thousand hyped-up high school students in the wooden bleachers and they gave him their full attention. Then he told them how much they meant to him. How his heart would break to lose just one of them.

It was a peculiar sentiment for an administrator to express to an assembly of teenagers. But Frank DeAngelis had been a coach longer than a principal, and he earnestly believed in motivation by candor. He had coached football and baseball for sixteen years, but he looked like a wrestler: compact body with the bearing of a Marine, but without the bluster. He tried to play down his coaching past, but he exuded it.

You could hear the fear in his voice. He didn't try to hide it, and he didn't try to fight back the tears that welled up in his eyes. And he got away with it. Those kids could sniff out a phony with one whiff and convey displeasure with snickers and fumbling and an audible current of unrest. But they adored Mr. D. He could say almost anything to his students, precisely because he did. He didn't hold back, he didn't sugarcoat it, and he didn't dumb it down. On Friday morning, April 16, 1999, Principal Frank DeAngelis was an utterly transparent man.