Maniac

The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer

By: Harold Schechter

Narrated by: Braden Wright

Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

Harold Schechter, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Hell’s Princess, unearths a nearly forgotten true crime of obsession and revenge, and one of the first - and worst - mass murders in American history.

In 1927, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school - one of the most modern in the Midwest - Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend. But behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia. On May 18 he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it. Thirty-eight children and six adults were murdered that morning, culminating in the deadliest school massacre in US history.

Maniac is Harold Schechter’s gripping, definitive, exhaustively researched chronicle of a town forced to comprehend unprecedented carnage and the triggering of a “human time bomb” whose act of apocalyptic violence would foreshadow the terrors of the current age.

©2021 Harold Schechter. (P)2021 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

A Holistic View of the Bath School Disaster

This book takes readers on a journey through not only Andrew Kehoe’s life and his actions and their effect upon the Bath community, but also delves into the context of the times and how this act of violence was the precursor to today’s mass killings.

American LARGEST school attack

Gripping story of America's first & LARGEST attack of a school killing scores od students and staff a century ago, followed by a chapter of its footnotes in history and media vs later attacks through to Sandy Hook.

A name veiled in shame; Remember the victims

I don't know how I missed this bit of history. The Bath School Disaster involved a clearly disturbed man with a history of violence, who killed his neighbor's dog and who had grievances against the government and taxes. His revenge against his town and his scorched-earth tactics chilled me. Like other mass murders, his name should remain veiled in shame even as we remember the victims and move to prevent it from happening again. To that end, the book does an excellent job. It makes no apologies for the monstrous deed but paints a picture of the suffering and events leading to it.

Meandering

The basic story is padded by all kinds of extraneous other stories as if the author were being paid by the word. The Charles Lindbergh story has nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of schoolchildren in Michigan, for example.

incredible

A gripping story of an incredibly tragic part of US history. I recommend this highly

Local history comes to life.

As a resident of Michigan, I had only a vague knowledge of this event. The book covered every detail of this event to a satisfying conclusion.

One of my favorite true crime authors flops.

Narration was fine. Most of the book isn't about Bath School Bombing or Andrew Kehoe. I wanted to learn more about the attack on my hometown 94 years ago. This book was highly anticipated by me because I love Harold Schechter's books. This book, however, mentions the bombing in from the "big stories that happened shortly after the attack helped to wipe this incident from memory due to short coverage", then Schechter proceeds to do the same thing as he goes into short detail about the people involved and the bombing itself, and then proceeds to go into massive detail about completely unrelated events. I had to shut it off after a while because this book really irritated me. I understand that it can be hard to get the gritty details on a story like this and be able to narrate them as fact, but he could have absolutely done better. This book does not do my hometown, nor any of the families who were affected, any justice. Just another instance like so often seems to happen, where the Bath School Bombing is simply overlooked and forgotten.

Outstanding

Harolds work is as always exemplary. The narrator is wonderful as well. Looking forward to the next one

Could have been better

Before getting this, get his book on Albert Fish. It is much better. I finished this in one sitting. Too short.

Creepy story

This one was was real creepy from a bygone era but not much different than today. The way it was planned out was eerie. A person gone way, way wrong.