Rating: 
Summary: Friends of Galen
Review: This is a difficult but neccessary book to read for anyone who knew Galen, or attended Simon's Rock. I left Simon's Rock a semester before the shooting. Gregory Gibson has actually undertaken the tasks that I contemplated repeatedly over the course of the last eight years, not only doing the legwork but also eloquently and honestly telling the story. This book is a service to anyone affected by the shooting, and to a society that desperately needs to learn these lessons. If you knew Galen-e-mail me--auntrenee@hotmail.com
Rating:
Summary: Friends of Galen
Review: This is a difficult but neccessary book to read for anyone who knew Galen, or attended Simon's Rock. I left Simon's Rock a semester before the shooting. Gregory Gibson has actually undertaken the tasks that I contemplated repeatedly over the course of the last eight years, not only doing the legwork but also eloquently and honestly telling the story. This book is a service to anyone affected by the shooting, and to a society that desperately needs to learn these lessons. If you knew Galen-e-mail me--auntrenee@hotmail.com
Rating:
Summary: Five stars is not enough
Review: This is a truly amazing book. I will not go on and tell you how wonderful it is. Just read it. Gregory Gibson is the voice of sanity in this country's insane need for guns.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing
Review: This is an excellent self-portrait of one man's reaction to the violent death of his son. Readers expecting a true crime book in the current fashion will be disappointed. There are no great revelations, no detectives working to break the case, no shocking photographs. That is both its strength and its weakness ... it is far more honest than most true crime books, far less likely to try to wrench emotional reactions out of the reader. On the other hand, wading through other people's grief is edifying, but exhausting. I left Simon's Rock the year before the shooting. Nothing surprised me much in the parts of the book dealing directly with Simon's Rock; the administration's actions (or lack thereof), and perhaps not even the shooting itself. The school, as another reviewer noted, was very much a sealed organism and prone to sealing off against the unwanted. Wayne Lo and his friends (for whom the idea of shooting someone was a way of relieving stress, not something to be actually *done*) were reacting, I think, to just that tendency. It should be noted that, as Gibson says at the end of the book, that Wayne's parents are suffering the worst. They have lost their son without losing him.
Rating:
Summary: Intriguing
Review: This is an excellent self-portrait of one man's reaction to the violent death of his son. Readers expecting a true crime book in the current fashion will be disappointed. There are no great revelations, no detectives working to break the case, no shocking photographs. That is both its strength and its weakness ... it is far more honest than most true crime books, far less likely to try to wrench emotional reactions out of the reader. On the other hand, wading through other people's grief is edifying, but exhausting. I left Simon's Rock the year before the shooting. Nothing surprised me much in the parts of the book dealing directly with Simon's Rock; the administration's actions (or lack thereof), and perhaps not even the shooting itself. The school, as another reviewer noted, was very much a sealed organism and prone to sealing off against the unwanted. Wayne Lo and his friends (for whom the idea of shooting someone was a way of relieving stress, not something to be actually *done*) were reacting, I think, to just that tendency. It should be noted that, as Gibson says at the end of the book, that Wayne's parents are suffering the worst. They have lost their son without losing him.
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