From Derf Backderf, the bestselling author of My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, comes the tragic and unforgettable story of Kent State—winner of the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Book—now in paperback
WINNER—
ALA/YALSA Alex Award Winner for Teen Readers and Adult Books
Publishers Weekly Graphic Novel Critics Poll
Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work
Ringo Award for Best Non-Fiction Comic Work
ACBD Critics Award in France
NAMED “BEST OF THE YEAR” BY—
The Akron Beacon Journal, The Beat, Comic Book Herald, the Comics Journal, Forbes, the Free Library of Philadelphia, Library Journal, Literary Hub, The New York Times, NPR, the Oklahoman, Pop Matters, Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post, and more!
THREE STARRED REVIEWS—
Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly
SELECTED FOR—
Choose to Read Ohio (CTRO) Booklist
Library of Congress Center for the Book: Great Reads from Great Places—Ohio
Texas Library Association’s Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List
Texas Library Association’s Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List
NOMINATED FOR—
The Angloulême Prize
Cartoonist Studio Prize
ComicBook.com—Best Graphic Novel
ComicBook.com—Best Cartoonist
Harvey Awards—Book-of-the-Year
Ohioan Book Award
Ringo Awards—Best Original Graphic Novel
Ringo Awards—Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
“MY GOD! THEY’RE KILLING US!”—freshman Ron Steele, Newsweek, May 18, 1970
On May 4, 1970, the National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Ohio. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, four students were killed and nine wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children—a shocking event burned into our national memory. A few days prior, ten-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 those four days in May when the country seemed on the brink of tearing itself apart. Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, first published in time for the 50th anniversary of the tragedy and now in paperback, is a moving and troubling story about the bitter cost of dissent—as relevant today as it was in 1970.
Praise
“[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
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“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
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“Derf Backderf's masterful Kent State does what really good, in-depth journalism should always do—breathe life into cold, hard facts—but in this case, with searing, memorable images, drawings that put us inside the skin of the protagonists. The students and the soldiers are all tragic figures in this telling, and Backderf lets us decide how to judge them. The final, violent scenes are almost Goyaesque in their brutal reality. You don't simply put this book down and get on with your life after reading the final page—you slowly recover, shaken from the experience.”Bill Griffith, author of Zippy the Pinhead, Invisible Ink, and Nobody's Fool
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"Deeply researched and gut-wrenching…”The New Yorker
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“One of the masterpieces of the medium...a work of devastating emotional impact.”Forbes, Rob Salkowitz
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“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
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“Kent State is meticulously researched…Backderf is in total artistic control of his material.”Cleveland Review of Books
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“Derf Backderf brings historical context and a propulsive sense of narrative to this graphical history of the Kent State shootings.”book critic, Etelka Lehoczky
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“The book not only illuminates history but also brings a form of closure to an unforgivable, inexcusable episode.”The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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“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
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“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
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“Surely the graphic novel of the year, and an early entry onto the next Best of the Decade lists.”Forbes
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"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
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