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Sebastian Ritscher
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SANDY HOOK

Elizabeth Williamson

An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and exclusive sources and access, SANDY HOOK tells the story of a school shooting and its aftermath, when a group of parents fought to rescue the truth of what happened to their children from a frenzy of online denial and conspiracizing.
On December 14, 2012, twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children barely older than toddlers, were shot and killed. It felt like a line in the sand, on gun violence and safety. Instead, ten years on, Sandy Hook has become a foundational story, and a symbol: of how false conspiracy narratives have gained traction in our world.

From a tragedy almost too terrible to fathom, the mass shooting at Sandy Hook emerged as an event some people truly believe never occurred, or was staged by the federal government as a pretext for seizing Americans' firearms. In the wake of the tragedy, relatives of the victims have been accosted on the street or at events honoring their loved ones. Some have been stalked and forced into hiding. Someone fired a gun into the home of one parent. Families were harassed online, challenged to prove the very existence of those they lost.

At the center of conspiracy theorists' crusade is Alex Jones's Infowars, where hoaxers aired noxious theories and raised money for their quest to "prove" that the shooting didn't happen. Emboldened by online anonymity, the conspiracists' questions grew into suspicion, suspicion into demands for proof, unanswered demands into rage. This pattern of denial and attack would come to characterize some people's response to every major event, from mass shootings to the 2020 presidential election, in which the false belief that the election was stolen prompted the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

The Sandy Hook families, their experiences as diverse as their numbers, refused to accept this. This is the story of their battle, led by the father of the youngest victim, to preserve their loved ones' legacies even in the face of threats to their own lives.
Through exhaustive reporting, narrative storytelling, and intimate portraits, SANDY HOOK will be the definitive book on one of the most shocking cultural ruptures of the internet age.

Elizabeth Williamson is a feature writer for the New York Times. She joined the Times as a member of its editorial board, writing about national politics during the 2016 campaign. Previously, Williamson was a reporter on the Wall Street Journal's Washington, DC-based special projects team, writing features about national politics and the culture of Washington. Williamson received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Marquette University. She grew up in Chicago and resides in Washington, DC, with her family.
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Published 2022-03-08 by Dutton

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Guest Elizabeth Williamson joins to talk with Kara and Scott about her new book, "Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and The Battle for Truth." Read more...

New York Times ran a fascinating adapted first serial piece online today that illuminates the role that Alex Jones and his relationship with Donald Trump played in fueling the Jan 6. Capitol insurrection. Read more...

New York Times reporter Williamson's searing debut demonstrates that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol had its roots in the deeply troubling efforts to claim that the 2012 massacre of 26 first-graders and staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax... Williamson's years of research includes interviews with survivors of the school shooting, parents, and first responders, as well as analysis of court documents and other records. She has produced the definitive account of this dark chapter of American history. Read more...

...meticulously reported... Williamson has produced heartbreaking portraits of the parents. Read more...

Elizabeth Williamson's book on the 2012 elementary school shooting is a near-unbearable, necessary indictment of Facebook, YouTube and the conspiracy theories they spread... Read more...

A new book by Elizabeth Williamson, a journalist at the New York Times, describes the collective delusion and malice of conspiracists who denied that the [Sandy Hook] shooting happened or asserted that it was a government plot to stoke anti-gun sentiment... [it] also shows how these hoaxers, and the platforms that helped them, created 'conspiratorial-industrial complex' that has eroded American democracy... Read more...

Elizabeth Williamson is in Austin, TX for the Alex Jones trial and has written a new NYT piece, "Sandy Hook Parents to Testify Against Alex Jones, and a Culture of Lies." Read more...

SANDY HOOK is on the Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Nonfiction longlist. Read more...

Sandy Hook became part and parcel of the paranoiac style of Americans thought - or perhaps better, nonthought. It can be fought, and Williamson records how the battle was taken into the courtroom, where numerous conspiracy theorists paid for their lies with jury-ruled financial penalties... We won't know the outcome of the actions against Jones until 2022, but the author makes it clear that the remedies to curb what Kellyanne Conway called 'alternative facts' exist. Essential reading that shows the straight line that runs from Sandy Hook to Charlottesville and Jan. 6.

Politico's "Playbook" newsletter included a nice shout out about Elizabeth Williamson and Kara Swisher's Politics & Prose event and some of the notable names that were in attendance. Read more...

...persuasive and heartbreaking new book... Read more...

Publishers Weekly has included Elizabeth Williamson's SANDY HOOK on their "Best Books of 2022" lists. SANDY HOOK appears on the Best of Nonfiction list. Read more...

Sandy Hook is vital reading... one of the most important books of 2022. Read more...

Author interview - Sandy Hook ushered in new era of conspiracy and lies, author finds... Read more...

Meticulously documented, Williamson's book explains how mendacious misinformation spread as social media ascended, paranoid theories took root, and grieving parents like Leonard Pozner, father of slain son Noah, and families fought back against the harassment. Read more...

RollingStone.com just shared an excerpt - with an original intro by Elizabeth Williamson - about Alex Jones's former lawyer Mark Bailen. It's an illuminating and disturbing read. Read more...

...(it)wisely frames the dissenting narratives about the massacre as harbingers of - and blueprints for - the assaults on reality to come. Read more...

Elizabeth Williamson appeared on PBS NewsHour to discuss the latest Alex Jones trial in CT, where the jury is currently deliberating the verdict. Read more...

A disturbing and important new book... Williamson is a compassionate story-teller and a thorough reporter. Read more...

...deeply researched and painfully compelling book... she coolly assembles a great wall of evidence and observation, calmly documenting Jones' myriad lies, and describing his gonzo shenanigans with an often amusing sobriety... Read more...

The Sandy Hook school shooting was a national tragedy; in the decade that followed, it became a focus of many outrageous conspiracy theories driven by people like Alex Jones. This well-researched book takes a look at how these myths came to be - and the fight against them. Read more...

Interview - How a Tragedy Became a Conspiracy Magnet: Sandy Hook Read more...

Washington Post named SANDY HOOK one of their "50 notable works of nonfiction" and Kirkus proclaimed it one of the Best Nonfiction Books of 2022. Kirkus also put the book first on its list of "Best Difficult but Necessary Reads of 2022."

SANDY HOOK is on Literary Hub's "Best Review Books of the Week" Read more...