13 Seconds [Hardcover]

Philip Caputo, author of the classic Vietnam memoir A Rumor of War, returns to the turbulent era of the late 1960s with 13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings. Caputo carefully sets the stage for the tragedy--the gunning-down of students on the Kent State, Ohio, campus--as he shows the pressures slowly building: Richard Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia, the militaristic missives of the ultra-leftist Weathermen, and statements such as high-profile California governor Ronald Reagan's declaration about student protests, given three weeks before the shootings ("If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with").

While important events surge and roil throughout the book like massive currents, Caputo focuses primarily on the smaller stories of the students injured and killed by National Guard bullets. Caputo, a journalist then writing for the Chicago Tribune (and who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1972), was on the scene soon after the shootings took place. He writes with immediacy, clearly drawn back to the moment even after 35 years have passed. Some of the students who died that day were active in campus politics, while others were caught purely by misfortune, but all paid an incredible price. By allowing readers to understand more about the students and the circumstances that surrounded May 4, 1970, Caputo turns the story of Kent State into a kind of tragic novel. The book itself is short: under 200 pages, including summaries of court testimonies that make up the bulk of the index. But the poignancy of what America lost that day comes through clearly in Caputo's dense, no-nonsense writing. --Jennifer Buckendorff

Caputo, best known for his groundbreaking Vietnam memoir, A Rumor of War, uses his strong reporting skills to reconstruct the events of May 4, 1970, when National Guard troops in Ohio opened fire on Kent State University students during an antiwar rally, killing four and wounding nine. Caputo covered the aftermath as a 28-year-old Chicago Tribune reporter, three years removed from his tour of duty as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam. After returning to Kent State in the fall of 2004, he produces an eloquent narrative sprinkled with his strongly voiced opinions on Vietnam, Richard Nixon ("that glowering man with the soul of Lear") and the tenor of the times ("Cops had become vandals, the forces of disorder and those of order had fused"). At Kent State, he writes, "the forces of authority had gotten away with murder." Caputo's retelling of the "massacre," as he calls it, and its aftermath is a worthy addition to the record. On the other hand, Caputo's reflections are relatively brief—an extended essay. An appendix with the 1970 report of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest, may complete the story but makes for dry reading. (May)
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Thirty-five years after American troops shot and killed four students at Kent State University, Caputo looks back on the tragedy. He begins with a brief description of the student-protest movement in the late sixties and follows that with a fairly detailed account of the shootings and the antiwar protest that preceded them. The bulk of the book is taken up with a thoughtful reflection on the shootings' importance in the context of the antiwar movement and its impact on the post--Vietnam era. Readers expecting a nostalgic take on the sixties are in for a shock: "It was a dreadful time," the author writes bluntly. Readers expecting to find out whom to blame for the tragedy will be disappointed, too. The book isn't simplistic enough to lay blame; it's about understanding what happened and why. The book is packaged with a DVD containing the 2001 documentary Kent State: The Day the War Came Home. Together, the images and Caputo's words serve as a powerful antidote to the romanticization of an era. David Pitt
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