Home at the End of the World: Fear, Faith, and the Crisis of Community in American Suburbs

An acclaimed historian turns her eye toward the 1990s and the Columbine shooting that shocked the national conscience, revealing this moment in her home state of Colorado as the crucible of the fears that continue to define American life today.

The 1990s are broadly recalled as a time of triumph for the United States: prosperity at home, the vanquishing of communism abroad, and the so-called end of history. But, simmering just under the surface, new fears—of moral degeneration, of violence against children, of toxic pollution, and of an ill-defined other—were beginning to crack society apart and define a new era in American politics. When two teenagers began shooting outside of Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, an apocalypse arrived in a community and a nation already primed for terror.

In this thrillingly unique history of the present, Kathleen Belew weaves together seemingly disparate developments within miles of each other in Colorado's Front Range: the rise of the religious right, the advent of Supermax prisons, rare abductions and new paranoias surrounding childhood, and the dubious cleanup of superfund sites. Through the lives of individuals, including the author, who experienced these happenings firsthand, these parallel histories reveal an unprecedented shift, away from community and toward the individual—and from mutual understanding toward polarization in American life. In Belew's telling, Columbine was the defining tragedy of this time, ushering in a new era of mass shootings to which a broken society remains unable to respond.

In this dark moment, Belew reveals more than an origin story for our time. She also unearths new hope in paths not taken. If Americans of the recent past built institutions and drafted laws out of fear of each other, we can use this history to expand our ideas of what might be possible: more peaceful futures, stronger communities, and safer lives for our children.