Newtown

An American Tragedy

De: Matthew Lysiak

Narrado por: Adam Verner

12/14/2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut

We remember the numbers: 20 children and six adults, murdered in a place of nurture and trust. We remember the names: Teachers like Victoria Soto, who lost her life protecting her students. A shooter named Adam Lanza. And we remember the questions: Outraged conjecture instantly monopolized the worldwide response to the tragedy, while the truth went missing.

Here is the definitive journalistic account of Newtown, an essential examination of the facts - not only of that horrific day but the perfect storm of mental instability and obsession that preceded it and, in the aftermath of unspeakable heartbreak, the controversy that continues to play out on the national stage. Drawn from previously undisclosed emails, police reports, and in-depth interviews, Newtown: An American Tragedy breaks through a miasma of misinformation with its comprehensive and astonishing portrayal.

This is the vital story that must be told today if we are to prevent another American tragedy in the days to come.

A portion of the proceeds from this audiobook will be donated to the Avielle Foundation.

©2013 Matthew Lysiak (P)2013 Tantor

Mental health in our country is broken – and this book helps to shares why

The book on Newtown not only touches your heart from the parent perspective Of the children and teachers lost, but also the struggle one parent had, Nancy Lanza in trying to get her son help. She gave up on her son, tried to live her own life, and that did not work!

A fair overview

I recently saw some things online about the Sandy Hook Promise and realize that I didn’t really know the details of what happened that day in Newtown. This book has a journalistic approach. And seem to present a lot of information it struck me the similarities between the story and several stories of recent school shooting so unfortunately we’re really not learning.

Tragedy Superficially Written

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would with caution. This book is not forthcoming.

Would you be willing to try another book from Matthew Lysiak? Why or why not?

No. He is not a particularly good writer and his research is lacking.

Which character – as performed by Adam Verner – was your favorite?

Really? This does not seem to apply.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No. This has a bit too much pablum.

Any additional comments?

There were too many times in this narrative, where they said such patent things like - and she/he were highly dedicated blah blah blah - compliment and sanctify the dead teachers. That is not to say they may not have been such people, but if the writer had done better research they could have said it with aplomb. This seems to have been written to protect the guilty and sanctify the victims. It does not ring true to me. What are they not saying?

just incredibly sad

the saddest books I've red incredible writing author did an amazing Job of getting us to sympathize for the victims and all they went through in this terrible situation

Sandy Hook, justice to Adam Lanza.

Amazing Plotline, I can't believe that a man would do something so cruel and violent to an innocent elementary school like Sandy Hook Elementary.

Humanizing the story and the town of Newtown.

The day really began the decade of death from the Epidemic of Mass shootings really began on December 14, 2012. After that, we now realize that this is no longer just occasional tragedy with political consequences, it's a National Crisis. I urge, no matter what anyone believes is the answer to this crisis, to give this book a read and hear about..... The acts of the first responders, teachers, of the children we have lost and those whose childhoods were stolen from them on the day of darkness. I also urge readers to discover, who was Adam Lanza and what could have been done to stop him. Would it be different if someone had reached out to him, Read Read Read and let us never forget those who were lost.

Well written, glad I read it.

An honest story of an extremely sad day in America. The interview at the end was also worth listening to.

A real life nightmare

Parts of this book were so hard to listen to. Knowing the suffering those children endured is so heartbreaking. The narrator did an amazing job on a sensitive topic.

I know it's necessary, but I don't like to talk about the killer. Those chapters I tended to skip through.

Heartbreaking but informative

Newtown is such a heartbreaking tragedy full of what if's like many other tragedies but it is very informative and the definitive book on Sandy Hook. The performance is great along with the writing.

Focus on mental health

This book is detailed & helpful in understanding the specific cold hard facts of Dec 14. The writer does an excellent job also w/ describing what led up to that horrible day. However, the writer never seems to observe, in his own writing, the most obvious mistakes made by the killer’s mom. Sure, the writer explains that the guns were hers & she could have chosen a different hobby to pursue w/ her son, but it skips over her entitled attitude when it came to his schooling & treatment.

She said he was a target for bullying, but had no evidence or anything concrete that showed he was in fact bullied. When a teacher who had helped her son retired, instead of keeping her son at school she (against that teacher’s advice) pulled him out as a method of near protest. As if that teacher owed it to her son to continue working. Her death & the death of her son, leaves that teacher w/ feelings of unearned guilt & culpability, that is completely inappropriate & unfair. The writer skims over the clear “Karen” like behavior of the killer’s mother! She’s angry w/ the school. A kid like hers will pick up on that & determine he’s a victim of that school.

Contrary to the writer’s belief (& other subject’s in the book), it’s pretty easy to see what happened here. An over protective, helicopter mom, burdened w/ entitlement (no time for a full time relationship when she didn’t work?) Injected her son w/ a mentality of victimhood he may not have had if she hadn’t been so everyone was out to get her son. I have a son who struggles w/ brain health & the last thing I would do is try to shield him from ever dealing w/ anything that could teach him that the world does not & is not supposed to revolve around him!

By the time she was trying to teach him that lesson (by taking vacations, leaving him alone over holidays — which is a level of cruelty I can’t process), she had already given him access to weapons of war & left him to dine on first person shooter games & violent fantasies for years. She said no one would help, but the truth is people WERE TRYING TO HELP, she didn’t LIKE their answers. She didn’t take the expert advice she was given & when she was told what needed to be done, she threw a fit & ISOLATED HIM from what she perceived was the problem. Everyone BUT her son!

This isn’t a mental health issue. It’s a gun issue, an issue of inappropriate mothering & of a child who was abused by his mother into complete dependance on her. Which she got a lot out of that in sympathy from her friends, whatever rage & victimhood she was addicted to & so on.

This book stigmatizes people like my son & people like me who have brain health issues, but take responsibility for our own health. Who listen to our doctors, follow treatment plans, accept disappointment w/o throwing fits or giving up. It does nothing for the victims of this tragedy to ignore what’s right in front of our faces for some weird talking point about “mental illness” where the focus is on the wrong person - the son & not the mother - who was the leader here. She led her son down that path, however unknowingly, she fed his resentment garden w/ her own & enmeshed w/ him. Then she separates from him almost right after SHE pulls him from school where he was making real progress & her story becomes “if that teacher didn’t quit on my poor baby.” The teacher did not deserve that & the community of Newtown didn’t deserve what her son did, first to her & then to the place SHE said her disconnection from her very dependent adult son was born.

DUH. This should be obvious. The law breaking was condoned by this mother. She gave him this obsession & society made it very very easy for her to provide the means of crime to her son. She could have taken him horse back riding & got him into chess or scuba diving or a million other things. But in this country we have a GUN CULTURE problem & this mother, her rules don’t apply to me or my son attitude caused this nightmare. It’s not true in other cases, like Columbine’s depressive killer, Dylan, whose mother is an amazing woman & did everything right. It may be true in Eric’s case, where the father would punish wrong doing but hide it from the world.

In this case, the mother of this killer kicked off the series of events that ended w/ young children & educators murdered. Families tortured by hoaxers will also love the lie that the police didn’t share their investigation too. There’s a website where the evidence is fully public to anyone who wants to download & comb through it. Just… good writing. Completely misses the forest for the trees. So frustrating. That lady who wrote she was the killer’s mom is a limelight chaser & she, like the mother in this book, uses her son’s struggles for her own identity. So in that sense, maybe she is the killer’s mother, just not in the way she thinks. I could write a book on how ridiculous it was that this book spent so much time talking about her. It wasn’t about her & she pulled energy away from the victim while painting a sign on her own son’s back! The betrayal is breathtaking. I find this repugnant. Don’t even get me started on “autism speaks.” That org is a mess & they don’t listen to autistic people, so their name is nonsense.

I could write for hours about how frustrating I find all of this — but I’ll end w/ — kids who struggle w/ brain health issues & who are smart & perceptive need parents who hold them accountable by modeling accountability, following expert advice & if something isn’t working, don’t blame the PERSON who is trying to help, don’t project a victim/entitlement mentality on to their kids & for the love of all things holy, don’t give them an arsenal of weapons & leave them in isolation. What other message was this kid supposed to receive when she did that? What other target would he have chosen? The subtext of his mother’s actions & attitude was, “you would be better, not lonely, normal & acceptable if that school hadn’t done you wrong. Guns are the answer & people who are proficient w/ them are role models. The school made it clear that b/c of your problems, you’ll never be a marine.” His response to that was to combine all of these messages + his online activities into a real life nightmare & direct it at the subject of his mother’s anger that she washed him in. He was sick, but this was avoidable. Good grief.