School shootings scare everyone, even those not immediately affected. They make national and international news. They make parents afraid to send their children off to school. But they also lead to generalizations about those who perpetrate them. Most assumptions about the perpetrators are wrong and many of the warning signs are missed until it's too late. Here, Peter Langman takes a look at 48 national and international cases of school shootings in order to dispel the myths, explore the motives, and expose the realities of preventing school shootings from happening in the future, including identifying at risk individuals and helping them to seek help before it's too late.

The poems in this book include dramatic monologues in the voices of historical figures such as Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Beethoven, and others, as well as narrative poems derived from English history and Scottish folktales, and shorter pieces in a variety of forms and styles, including free verse, blank verse, lyrics, and sonnets.