Kent State - by Derf Backderf

Book Synopsis

From Derf Backderf, the bestselling author of My Friend Dahmer, comes the Eisner and ALA/YALSA Alex Award-winning tragic and unforgettable story of the Kent State shootings, told in graphic novel form.

Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Times, Forbes, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and NPR, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio is a moving and troubling story about the bitter price of dissent--as relevant today as it was in 1970.

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, four students were killed and nine shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children--a shocking event burned into our national memory.

The fatal shootings triggered immediate and massive outrage on campuses around the country. More than four million students participated in organized walkouts at hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools, the largest student strike in the history of the United States at that time. It was a day that shocked the nation and helped turn the tide of public opinion against America's war in Vietnam.

A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike.

Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf has conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart.

In this award-winning and powerful graphic novel, Derf Backderf takes us back to the age of the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, Woodstock, and the Cold War and explores, in words and images, a scene of tragedy: the campus of Kent State University, where National Guard Troops attacked unarmed protestors and killed four students (Allison Beth Krause, age 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20, and William Knox Schroeder, age 19).

Review Quotes

"An excellent graphic retelling of a climactic moment in American history . . . Four dead in Ohio, indeed--but Backderf's vivid, evocative book does a splendid job of keeping their memories alive."-- "Kirkus, STARRED REVIEW"

"Kent State is meticulously researched...Backderf is in total artistic control of his material."-- "Cleveland Review of Books"

"Kent State, unfolding in sober black and white, is as passionate as it is meticulous in its treatment of the May 4, 1970 killings of four unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard."-- "The New York Times Book Review"

"[Backderf's] expertly crafted chronicle of this defining moment in U.S. history serves as a deeply moving elegy for the victims. Readers may also draw from it sobering parallels to the deep divisions of contemporary times, again dangerously rife with media noise and misinformation muddying the waters."-- "Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review"

"An incendiary corrective to the myths and misconceptions surrounding these events and a memorial to the lives lost or forever altered that should be required reading for all Americans."-- "Library Journal - STARRED review"

"Deeply researched and gut-wrenching..."-- "The New Yorker"

"Derf Backderf brings historical context and a propulsive sense of narrative to this graphical history of the Kent State shootings."--Etelka Lehoczky "book critic"

"One of the masterpieces of the medium...a work of devastating emotional impact."--Rob Salkowitz "Forbes"

"Surely the graphic novel of the year, and an early entry onto the next Best of the Decade lists."-- "Forbes"

"The book not only illuminates history but also brings a form of closure to an unforgivable, inexcusable episode."-- "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"

"The meticulous research is shown in more than two dozen pages of notes, confirming the sources from the Kent State University May 4 Collection about the shootings, but also Backderf's personal research and interviews."-- "The Akron Beacon Journal"

"While removed from the events by a half-century, by the time the memoir spirals into the final spasm of chaos, the tragedy these boldly drawn panels feel fresh as if from yesterday's news."-- "PopMatters"

About the Author

Derf Backderf is the bestselling and award-winning author of My Friend Dahmer, Trashed, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, and Kent State, and is the recipient of the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for political cartooning. His weekly comic strip, The City, ran for nearly 25 years and appeared in more than 140 newspapers. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.