Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children (Library of Contemporary Thought)

Jonathan Kellerman is best known as the author of a series of bestselling suspense novels starring psychologist sleuth Dr. Alex Delaware, but his nonliterary background is as a children's clinical psychologist. In Savage Spawn, inspired by the schoolyard shootings that took place in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Springfield, Oregon, in 1998, he brings his training to bear on the question of how children can become cold-blooded killers. Kellerman has as much--perhaps more--to say about the broader issue of the nature of psychopathy, however, than he does about youth violence, though he does occasionally bring the two themes together. But Savage Spawn is essentially a hundred-page-plus op-ed piece rooted in Kellerman's belief that there are fundamentally bad people in the world and that the response to the perpetrators of violent acts such as the shooting at Jonesboro should be to "lock them up till they die." (Although published shortly after the multiple-death shooting in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, the book was clearly written before this incident took place.) Readers may ultimately prefer more detailed considerations such as William Pollack's Real Boys or Lost Boys, by James Garbarino.