Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing by Arnie Bernstein

On May 18, 1927, in a horrific conflagration of dynamite and blood, a madman forever changed a small Michigan town. Bath Massacre takes readers back more than eighty years to that fateful day, when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school, killing thirty-eight children and six adults. Among the dead was Kehoe, who literally blew himself to bits by setting off a concealed dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, what was left of his wife---burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze---was found tied to a hand cart, her skull crushed and objects placed with macabre ritualism next to her body.

With the horrors of Oklahoma City and 9/11 still fresh in Americans' minds, the seemingly endless stories of school violence epitomized by the Columbine shooting, and suicide bombers around the globe, Bath Massacre resonates powerfully for modern readers and reminds us that terrorism and murder on a large scale are nothing new. Bolstered by cooperation with survivors and their descendents, the book includes interviews with the people who lived through the horror of that day.