... exactly what it purports to be, though the title couldn’t have prepared me for the level of schooling I was about to get ... split into almost 30 chapters, each one with as much care and integrity as the last ... Filled with the most impeccable details — the ones that rarely make it into tight news reports — Williamson draws on documented facts to paint pertinent portraits of the families and victims of the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting in Newtown, Connecticut ... a well documented explanation of a tragedy, receipts in hand and nicely organized in the book’s notes section ... Expert organization keeps the narrative momentum up, never stagnating on any one person or topic. Williamson artfully lays foundations throughout, using these touch points to gently remind readers who’s who in the long list of people who appear in 'Sandy Hook' ... That said, the book is exhausting: vivid accounts of grief, heartbreaking details of Sandy Hook, terrifying things people have said and done in the dark anonymity of the internet. The thick web of connections explored within reaches from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to QAnon and everything in between ... Somehow, despite the depressing nature of the subject matter, Sandy Hook remains hopeful ... Conspiracies and our post-truth reality are topics that have become evergreen, making Sandy Hook one of the most important books of 2022
In her deeply researched and painfully compelling book, Williamson makes the smart choice not to fulminate over the many, florid misdeeds of Jones and his lesser-known collaborators. Instead, she coolly assembles a great wall of evidence and observation, calmly documenting Jones’ myriad lies, and describing his gonzo shenanigans with an often amusing sobriety. Most effectively, she juxtaposes the sincerity of the bereaved parents with the red-faced, ranting Jones ... If ever a story called for the careful, levelheaded exposition of traditional reportage it’s this one, set against a relentless chorus of yelling ... One of the particular strengths of Sandy Hook is that it offers many in-depth accounts of and interviews with Sandy Hook hoaxers, a motley crew of misfits and crackpots ... When Williamson finally landed an interview with Jones, it took place in a small room at Infowars HQ in Texas. She found him and his rants about the First Amendment shopworn and 'tiresome,' but her masterful description of the encounter is anything but.
... a meticulously reported book about a decade-old tragedy that is more relevant than ever. Williamson does not dwell on the mental illness of the gunman who committed the unspeakable violence. Nor does the book tackle the weightier questions about gun policy ... Williamson’s topic is the assault on truth ... Williamson has produced heartbreaking portraits of the parents, people who suffered the greatest loss imaginable, that of a child, only to be victimized again by years of abuse ... Despite the recent courtroom victories of Sandy Hook’s parents, it is hard to read this book without being utterly terrified — in many ways, it’s the scariest I’ve ever read. The book speaks to the persistence of delusion and the elusiveness of truth. It doesn’t bode well for the future.
... persuasive and heartbreaking ... Before connecting those dots, she starts with a retelling of the tragedy itself, moving tastefully but briskly, giving grieving families their due while not descending into trauma porn. The stories she tells are heart-rending: parents hugging children goodbye in the morning, then facing hours of uncertainty, then a lifetime of unspeakable loss. She pays little attention to the shooter, Adam Lanza. She also skips past the gun-regulation arguments that seized the news cycle, and barely mentions the families’ lawsuit against Remington, which came years later. The real business of this book is the conspiracy theories ... Her sense of Jones’s interior life is not always coherent ... if Jones’s true nature remains elusive, Williamson is far better at parsing the man’s business strategy — which, of course, doubles as his political strategy.
An important book that is recommended for anyone concerned about the rise conspiracy theories in American society, and how families are working to preserve their children’s legacies in the aftermath of tragedy.
... help[s] us understand the gun control debate as one fueled by partisanship, a debate in which each side motivated its own adherents in large part by demonizing the other, and in which no one has come close to addressing the root of the problem ... If you view the Sandy Hook shooting as part of a story about the growth of misinformation in American society, then for Pozner to beat back that misinformation seems like a meaningful victory...Yet disinformation is only one front in the war over guns, while actual guns continue to claim tens of thousands of lives per year. Five of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history have occurred since Sandy Hook, and none of those other shootings provided the same fodder for conspiracy theorists that Sandy Hook did. While Williamson investigates what leads people to invent, disseminate, and believe conspiracy theories, she devotes little space to the deeper question of violence and the ways in which the proliferation of firearms both enables and legitimizes that violence. That guns are the primary means of violence in the United States is so obvious that it’s easy to take it for granted, but most commentators still have precious little to say about the relationship between the Second Amendment and the psychological and social distortions that make people want to murder their fellow citizens for no reason at all ... The most promising avenue for gun control may be one to which Williamson gives surprisingly little attention ... That the greatest gun control victory in a generation might be the result of a legal technicality offers an object lesson about political mobilization.
... searing ... Williamson details how the pernicious reality-denying mentality Jones fostered in the Sandy Hook deniers spread to those Trump supporters who believed that he won the 2020 presidential election and who stormed the Capitol to 'stop the steal.' Williamson’s years of research includes interviews with survivors of the school shooting, parents, and first responders, as well as analysis of court documents and other records. She has produced the definitive account of this dark chapter of American history.
