| Title | : | Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 227 |
| Publication | : | First published March 9, 2021 |
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.
Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer Reviews
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4.5 Stars
For the love of God! This man, Andrew P. Kehoe, was a twat-ass-bastard-piece of sh*t!
I didn’t know anything about this man until this book...or maybe I did and chemo brain fogged the history.
This one man was the greatest mass murderer of children in American history!! Not to mention animals and adults he killed! He deserved to be quartered and set on fire but I digress. He took care of himself at any rate.
This man would have killed more people if some of his plan didn’t go awry. Can you even imagine!!
I felt like the author did a wonderful job of finding out as much information as he could with what was given.
Kehoe destroyed the Bath Consolidated School and it was horrific. Everything he did was horrific and I must say there are graphic scenes in the book.
The author also filled in other tidbits of history inside this story.
I’m going to leave with a quote. They had a special ceremony years later and invited the 9 surviving members of the massacre.
Fifty years after Andrew Kehoe perpetrated his unspeakable act-the greatest mass murder of children in America history-nine elderly women and men who had lived through that calamitous day walked up to the stage and received their diplomas.
Yeah, I cried!!
*Thank you to Netgalley and Little A for a digital copy of this book.
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
BLOG:
https://melissa413readsalot.blogspot.... -
May 18, 1927
Bath Michigan's School disaster/mass murder remains the deadliest of its kind in the history of the United States.
The heartbreak, the tears, the pain, the tragedy. One man, Andrew P. Kehoe detonated a series of explosives and killed thirty-eight children, and six adults. At least 58 people were injured as well. Kehoe had studied engineering at Michigan State University. But he was mainly a farmer and treasurer of the township school board who seethed with rage, was paranoid, and narcissistic. He made serval trips to obtain dynamite but at the time dynamite was often used on farms, so his actions were not deemed unusual and did not raise any red flags.
On the day of the explosion, he murdered his wife, set fire to his property, killing animals, and left a stenciled message on his fence which read "Criminals are made, not born" and loaded his truck with explosives, and drove to the school. Where he was not finished inflicting carnage.
Can you even imagine what everyone on the scene experienced and witnessed? The anguish of identifying your children? The heartbreak of a losing a child, a loved one, a neighbor?
The "Mad Butcher of Bath" is not the only killer discussed in this book. Other cases and murderers are mentioned. History of the area is discussed as well.
Extensively researched, well written, and heartbreaking, this is a gripping read for True Crime fans. It is educational and has statements and quotes from those who were there that day.
Thank you to Little A and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at
www.openbookposts.com -
Happy publication day!! This was a great read!
Maniac is an amazing piece of work, but it also hurts like hell. Harold Schechter is thorough and devastating in this true crime chronicle of a "human time bomb" whose acts of violence seem to foreshadow an era of mass murder and bombings.
Schechter consulted books, newspapers, journals, census records, and so much more to detail the lives of so many people and communities together in order to accurately tell the story of The Bath School Disaster. There are so many elements that played a part in making this book as good as it was. The background into the area that would become Bath, the life stories of the immigrants who would give birth to Andrew Kehoe, the contemplation on the public's tendency to remember certain crimes for generations while others, such as this one, that are just as publicized and heinous are forgotten almost overnight. The inclusion of other events throughout the story to help you understand what was shaping the way people lived at the time, and even to remind you of all the things happening at once that you don't think about, was incredible.
Using records, quotes, and facts, Schechter gives you the information you need to make your own analysis. Andrew Kehoe was the first son born after six daughters and thus pressure was placed on him to be the heir, especially in comparison to his siblings' successful lives. Placed on a pedestal and developing a pathologically inflated sense of self-importance. Reportedly a genius who was cold and distant, as well as a loner. You read the reports from others that show cruelty in the first half of his life. For true crime readers this book has a little bit of everything that we tend to see and study in a mass murderer, but with a relatively above average life at the time and a seemingly good environment what could have caused it?
In the climax of the story, the events leading up to and during the bombing of the school, my heart was palpitating. The short snapshots throughout this chapter felt like the flashing scenes in a movie before bad things happen that drive up your anxiety. The worst part was the aftermath. The newspaper reports and witness accounts of the reactions of the parents and the community, as they lose 45 people to Kehoe's horrifying act, most of them children. This book's worst quality is that it's so real.
While my heart is aching after reading this, I can't help but be impressed with Harold Schechter and his ability to put these events to paper with so much going on at once, and to have me at the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading it. This is definitely an author who stands out, and one who I'll have to read more from.
Thank you to NetGalley, Little A, and Harold Schechter for this advanced review copy, this was a great book to read and you broke my heart. -
This is the first work I've read by prolific true crime write Harold Schechter. It was okay. The book didn't seem to include any new revelations or research, but rather was a compilation of newspaper articles from the day.
Frankly, the book featured a lot of history on Lindbergh and his solo flight from the US to Europe. While the story played a role in why the Bath massacre isn't more well-known, as the newspaper coverage of it was almost immediately replaced by articles about the aviator's feat, I felt the amount of the book dedicated to aviation was disproportionate simply because it was so unrelated to the actual topic at hand. Yes, it was international news at the time. But why should I book about the bombings in Bath, Michigan and perpetrator Henry Kehoe feature at least 2 chapters about Lindbergh? It seemed incongruous to the story the author should have been telling.
As of a few years ago, there were still survivors of the tragic event alive. The author seemingly made no attempt to contact any survivors or even descendants of them. I don't recall a full list of victims in the book, yet Schechter detailed Lindbergh's last meals before this history-making flight and the aviator's mother's final words to him before his attempt at flying to Europe solo. It just didn't work for me.
FTC disclosure: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley. -
This is going to be a quicky review, because I'm writing it while I wait for my kettle to warm up so I can make coffee. It's FREAKING FREEZING here and I haven't moved my desk back upstairs to my office yet. It's still on the sunroom/porch, which, while it does have windows that close, and vinyl blinds AND curtains, is not warm.
OOH, that reminds me, I should totally read The Shining this year.
ANYWAY. So, this book. I picked up this one and one other by this author through Kindle Unlimited, which I had as a free trial due to buying a new Kindle, and then they FORCED me to keep when they offered me an additional 3 months for $2 when I tried to cancel it. So now I have to use it, hence this book. I dunno, they looked interesting.
I had never heard of this tragedy before, and honestly, I thought it meant Bath, England when I saw the title, not Bath, Michigan. (Or, I guess, one could look at "Bath School" as a school full of baths? Hmm.) Ugh, these quick reviews are always so super random and wonky. Sorry. Back on topic, I hear bubbling.
OK So I had never heard of this, and one of the things that Schechter goes into is the whipfast news cycle, and the blink-and-you-miss-it attention span of people. This was, and continues to be, the most deadly mass murder event by a single perpetrator in the US, and the targeted victims were innocent school students ranging from 5-16 years old, and if the guy who did it had actually had things go his way, it would have been much more deadly than the 40 people he actually killed. But many people have never heard of it, and will likely continue never hearing of it, because of everything that keeps going on around it. Lindbergh was making his historic transatlantic flight while this happened - a thing that Schechter decided to go into in GREAT DETAIL, dedicating two full chapters to, plus additional mentions. I get that it was big news, but I did not like or understand his lapsing into Lindbergh like that. This story is about THIS tragedy, and here he is, cutting away to take focus off of the grief and horror and loss to talk about a young pilot. WHY? Are you not doing the very thing that the newspapers did back then? The first time it happened in the text, Lindbergh was only wishing and hoping to get to make the flight - but we're treated to a full chapter on him and his aspirations anyway. WHY?? What does that have to do with anything? Talk about the news coverage WHEN IT IS RELEVANT. This was not.
He goes into quite a lot of depth into Andrew Kehoe and his depravity and his psychopathy. This dude was a piece of shit. Listening to the things he did was disgusting and heartbreaking, and that was even BESIDES blowing up a school full of children.
Anyway, now I'm gonna have to reboil my water. Mostly this book felt like it didn't know what it wanted to be. Was it a report? A story? A criticism of humanity's desire for the shocking? ALL of those things?
No matter what it was, the style it should have had was not the one it did have. It just told event after event after event. I have an overactive empathy gland, so I was able and willing to fill in a lot of the gaps with the telling style, but when I take a step back, I can see that this was not written particularly well. It was like an assignment and and definitely pulled out all of the most horrible aspects to tug at the heartstrings.
I am rating it 3 stars, because it was short, it did what it set out to do, which was tell the story of this tragedy and who did it and why, but it was just kind of mundane about it. -
Quick, rapid flowing short book that tells the story of a sheer monster. I had never heard of this early serial murderer that started as most with killing small animals but there was such unadulterated hate! He was a narcissistic sadist, filled with rage and paranoia and was wanting revenge. On May 18, he detonated explosives in the school, killing 38 children and 6 adults. That was the deadliest school massacre in US history! The most despictable human being that you have probably never heard of.
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This is a vivid account of a school bombing in 1927 that took the lives of 38 children and 6 adults. Some of it was hard to read due to the detailed descriptions of the injuries and destruction. Andrew P. Kehoe blamed the whole town, and his wife, for his financial issues and the tax put on the town to help build the school was his biggest complaint. It’s sad that he felt like punishing the townspeople in this way was the answer. If all the explosives that he had planted had detonated the whole town of Bath, Michigan would have been gone. The story is told in great detail and gives the reader the background behind the town and Andrew Kehoe.
The book also contains the story of Charles Lindbergh and his 1927 nonstop flight from New York City to Paris. His adventure takes places during the same time as the Bath bombing. The author also mentions many other crimes that took place during that time period. One that is told is the story of the murder of Albert Snyder by his wife, Ruth Snyder, and her boyfriend, Henry Judd Gray. There are also many cases mentioned in the book that involve child culprits. Thankfully none of these are told on detail.
All in all, the book was interesting and well written. I have enjoyed many books by Harold Schechter and I look forward to reading more.
(Advanced readers copy courtesy of NetGalley) -
Wow.
Chances are, you, ,like me, have never heard of this event. Even when he lists current events that cause people to look back upon this and write about it, I could not remember reading about this horrific event. I had to think that it was because what was right in front of me was also so horrific, I was not reading every single thing that was out there about what was happening in the now and what has happened in the past. Because I will tell you this; once you read this story and the horrors that Andrew Kehoe inflicted on the community of Bath, you will never, ever forget it. And in my opinion, that is a good thing. We need to honor those lost that day, remember them in our hearts and minds, like we do those who have been lost in other horrific events that have occurred in the time since in our country. This was one of the most horrific acts I have ever read about, perpetrated by one disgruntled man, and all I can say is [similarly to those events at Columbine], if it had all gone to plan, the death and destruction would have been as such that even Charles Lindbergh could not have knocked the event out of the news [this was an odd part of the story - I thought initially that a part of another book had accidentally gotten put in this one as I had NO idea how CL could be a part of this story].
Told in short spurts [which was good in a way because there were absolute moments where you needed to recover from what you were reading; there are moments of graphic descriptions that will never, ever leave you], this is a well-researched, well-written book. I cannot imagine writing a book like this - to research and write about the deliberate destruction of children is just horrific to think about, and yet I am grateful because now I can remember these people and the horrors they suffered and for some, somehow survived, and honor them in a way that should have been happening all along. I can only hope that this book brings this horrific attack to the nations attention and that the honoring of this town and all it suffered at the hands of a narcissistic psychopathic sadist, begins.
Thank you to NetGalley, Harold Schechter, and Little A for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review. -
Harold Schechter juxtaposes the heinous actions of "seriously troubled" Andrew P. Kehoe against the backdrop of U. S. and world events in the early decades of the Twentieth Century in this novel that demands to be read in one sitting. The novel chronicles the egregious actions of Kehoe, who proclaims himself a victim, in a chilling, thoroughly-researched, true crime novel about the first mass killing In the United States. In stripped-down prose, Schecter presents this crime against society that presaged the mass killings of Columbine, Sandy Hook, and many others in recent history.
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I've been looking for something on the Bath massacre, but unfortunately this disappointed, a lot. It reads like a high school essay where the student was trying to pad, pad, pad the wordcount to meet the assignment.
It is ostensibly a book about Kehoe, but there's really not much on him that you couldn't google easily. Basically, the writer had access to wikipedia and old newspapers online, and that was about it for sources. It doesn't seem to have been deeply researched, and the narration is slow. There's also sizable divergences into other events of the era (if I wanted a book about Lindbergh, I'd GET one about him). The actual coverage of the Bath tragedy is scanty (doesn't start until about 2/3 the way in), and it's scanty. -
I really enjoyed this account of the Bath School Disaster. This book is very well researched and the author utilizes historical facts and details to really paint a picture of what life would be like at this time in Michigan.
The narrative is very fact based with little embellishment, which I appreciated but may not be for those who enjoy a more descriptive plot.
Thank you to Netgalley and Little A for allowing to review this arc. -
As is so often the case with Harold Schechter, Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Serial Killer only spends about half of its time talking directly about its ostensible subject -- Andrew Kehoe -- and his destruction of the Bath Consolidated School.
Schechter, you see, aspires to be more than a "true crime writer;" he aspires to be a "true crime historian," going so far as to coin the term near the end of the book, and in all of his books that I've read, he achieves his goal. In fact, it is in the half of Maniac, where he switches to other topics, that his aspiration comes to fruition, and it has always been so.
In Maniac, Schechter -- the true crime historian -- first appears in what seems an odd leap away from Andrew Kehoe (after a painstaking recollection of the nature and nurture that led Kehoe to the brink of bombing a school and taking the lives of 45 people, mostly children): Schechter takes us on a journey with a young and daredevily Charles Lindbergh. My knee jerk reaction was, "what?! why?" -- what possible link to a school bombing could Charles Lindbergh have? As it turns out, this link was the actual thesis of Schechter's Maniac.
Lindbergh's heroic achievement -- the first solo transatlantic flight -- was so awe inspiring to the U.S. of 1927, that America completely forgot about Kehoe's terrifying crime, thus the single greatest death toll on U.S. soil (not tied to military actions and massacres), until 1995's Oklahoma City Bombing was swept into the dust bin of history, proving just how short our memories can be and just how willing we are to avoid pain and sadness whenever and however we can. And this is may be why we are doomed to see these tragedies repeated over and over again.
Schechter moves on from Kehoe and Lindbergh, touching on a number of other mass killers whose killings were spoken of in the superlative, described in the aftermath as "the worst mass killing in history" or "the worst tragedy of the nation," only to have someone dig up a reminder of Kehoe in an attempt to contextualize the repetitiveness of the U.S. penchant for mass killings. Moreover, many of the killings Schechter evokes also find themselves disappearing into the background of memory when something big happens or when a more scintillating crime comes along.
Schechter wants us to understand that shooting up or blowing up schools has a long history and that right now, in our contemporary world, we've cycled from serial killings to mass killings. It's happened before and it's happening again. It is nothing new, and the regularity of these cycles of crime should command our attention and our action.
But ... oh look ... there's something shiny and new. What was I saying? Doesn't matter. I'm gonna go play with my shiny new toy now.
gotta go for the moment ... i'll continue this later (so if you get this far before i have come back, make sure to check in again for the finished product) -
* Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review *
I was born and raised in Michigan, and attended Michigan State University, 7 miles south of Bath Township. I had never heard of the Bath School disaster (better called a massacre) until a Chicago columnist recently wrote about it. Twenty children and six adults were shot to death at Sandy Hook; thirty-eight children and six adults were blown to pieces when a vengeful local farmer detonated hundreds of pounds of explosives carefully disposed inside the Bath consolidated school in 1927. What happened and why doesn’t anyone know about it? Harold Schechter’s book Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer (New York: Little A, 2021) intends to tell us, with somewhat mixed success.
In an odd first chapter, Schechter provides a capsule introduction to the region of central Michigan that is now in Clinton County. In breathless tabloid prose (unfortunately, a tone he sustains throughout), he recounts some early inter-tribe indigenous conflicts liberally larded with terms like “bloody,” “butchery,” “slaughter,” “superstitious awe,” and “primitive fears.” Is he suggesting the Bath School Massacre grew out of some kind of cursed land, not to mention the “savage” stereotype he uncomfortably approaches? It’s twenty-some pages before we meet even the ancestral Kehoes, refugees from the Irish potato famine, who ultimately produce Andrew Kehoe in 1872, the main actor of this nightmare.
Andrew Kehoe was smart, hard-working, clever about mechanics and engineering. His mother died when he was a teenager. He drifted and worked in various places, as a dairyman in my hometown for a time, and as a lineman in Iowa. Somewhere along the way, though the evidence is sparse, he apparently sustained a “severe fall” that reportedly left him “semi-conscious” for weeks. By 1910, at nearly 40, he was back home with his father, who had remarried a much younger woman. At that time, gasoline-powered stoves (“Have your husband’s warm breakfast on the table in half an hour!”) had become popular – and Schechter recites numerous news accounts of deadly explosions caused by these stoves. Kehoe’s stepmother lights the stove one morning and as Kehoe looks on, it blows up, spraying her with flames. It occurs to him to throw water on her, which only spreads the fuel and fire. She dies a horrific death. Schechter doomily announces that “only later, when the world learned exactly what [he] was capable of, did rumors spread…” that maybe he had rigged the stove on purpose. But this idea ends here.
The following year, Kehoe marries the niece of a prominent and wealthy local farmer. Trouble starts with the neighbors: he angrily chases off the priest collecting money for a new church building; he breaks off relations with a neighbor over a sale of cattle who die due to Kehoe’s own negligence. The rich uncle dies; Kehoe takes out a mortgage to buy his farm. He manages to fight with the buyer of his own farm over a pile of firewood. This is the man that Schechter describes on p. 8 as “a respected citizen, admired by his neighbors”? Well, when they move to the new farm, his wife’s established friends and relatives welcome them. He is handy and helps people fix things. But there’s an arrogance about him: he wears a three-piece suit to plow his fields, and chides people who lose at cards or who didn’t go to college like he did. And the animal abuse is appalling: he beats a horse to death, he shoots a neighbor’s lost dog for coming on his property, and he seems to have killed his stepsister’s pet cat.
Enter the local school superintendent. A new consolidated school is to be built; the childless Kehoe bitterly resents paying any tax to fund it. He wangles his way onto the school board where he fights every expenditure, he “forgets” to deliver the superintendent’s paychecks and halves his vacation time. His mechanical skills lead him to take over maintenance of the school building, with free run of it 24/7. He falls badly behind on his mortgage. The school board is sick of him; he runs for township clerk – and loses. In the fall of 1926, he drives down to Jackson, MI and buys 500 pounds of pyrotol, a war-surplus explosive used to clear rocks and stumps in fields. The dealer thought nothing of it, assuming it was for normal purposes… but, as Schechter duly warns us: “But he was wrong.”
Seven months later, on the last day of school, Kehoe murders his wife and sets his farm on fire, having hobbled his horses with wire to be sure they cannot escape. At 8:45 AM, the carefully placed and wired explosives go off, collapsing half the building on schoolchildren and teachers. As hysterical parents and frantic first responders flock to the carnage, Kehoe pulls up in his truck. He beckons over the superintendent – and detonates his explosives-and-shrapnel-packed truck. Schechter enjoys telling us about the skein of intestine wrapped around the truck’s steering wheel – and the gawker who snips off a piece of it as a souvenir. Within days, postcards are being sold depicting the rows of children’s bodies, and Mrs. Kehoe’s charred corpse. And the story is almost completely forgotten in the news.
Why? Because two days later, Charles Lindbergh has taxied off for his flight to Paris, and the world goes mad for Lindy. Schechter devotes many pages to Lindbergh’s history and flight, and it feels like padding. This book clocks out at over 300 pages, but the line spacing is generous, the page margins wide, and blank pages intersperse every chapter. This is frankly a much slighter book than it looks. There are lengthy litanies of dozens of sensational murders of the era having nothing to do with Michigan, Andrew Kehoe, psychology, or much else except that there were lots of murders in the papers those days (and these, of course). But this is what Harold Schechter does: write true-crime books. This one feels like an assemblage of clips from newspapers.com, collected by a dutiful research assistant, and assembled by Schechter. He adds little to these stitched-together snippets beyond his heavy-breathing “if only they had known,” “one unstable man’s implacable hatred,” and other such melodramatic commentary. He tries to make a case for crimes that capture the imagination and memory of a society because of what it fears most: Charles Manson as the drug-crazed hippy of the 60s, poisonings in an era when patent medicines were freely sold and toxins of all kinds dumped into waterways, and mass murders post 9/11. He doesn’t really succeed in fitting the Bath School Massacre into any such explanation: this was one damaged, furious, violent man who killed many dozens of innocents, yet was functional enough to be considered a “respected citizen” by some. It remains a horrifying puzzle, and other than the value of Schechter reminding us of this one terrible event that should be honored and remembered, Maniac does not do very much to explain it, or enlighten us. -
4.5 stars audio
2 poorly executed stars story -
Incredibly interesting and well researched book about the mass killing of teachers and children at a school in Michigan just over 100 years ago. So good in fact that I read the entire book in less than a day.
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This book was truly a surprise. It’s a true crime story focusing on one man in the town of Bath Township in Clinton County Michigan, the home of a mass murderer that most people have never heard anything about. Andrew Kehoe was a member of the Bath community along with his wife. They never had children but yet Mr. Kehoe was involved politically with the school in town. During his lifetime, the rural community turned away from the one room schoolhouse idea and built a consolidated school for all grades. The author takes us through his life events that seemed to shape his decision making, good and bad. In addition to this historical perspective, we also see a broader view of other important and newsworthy events that occurred around the same time. For instance, Charles Lindbergh flew is crossing of the Atlantic as a solo pilot shortly after the horrible events of the community. This perspective was fascinating to understand why most people are unaware that crimes such as this occurred prior to the more recent mass shootings, such as Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas.
I found this to be a very readable and intriguing dissection of the events and people involved. It was clear that a great deal of research went into the writing of this book. I definitely learned something from reading this book.
Recommended for true crime readers.
#Maniac #Netgalley #LittleA -
I can't believe I had no idea about this case. In 1927, a new and modern (for it's time) primary school had opened in Bath, Michigan. Andrew P. Kehoe whom was the school board treasurer, and local farmer. He was an educated, respectable neighbor and friend! But underneath that act, he was a narcissistic sadist, filled with rage and paranoia and was wanting revenge. On May 18, he detonated explosives in the school, killing 38 children and 6 adults. That was the deadliest school massacre in US history!
This was so interesting! True Crime fans will definitely want to read this well researched book about this deranged mass murder. You will read about Andrew Kehoes life, and how although growing up in a well to do family life, there was cruelty from the beginning. I was on the edge of my seat reading the chapters before the incident. And I was heartbroken reading about the aftermath. The author did an amazing job with this story, and I'd definitely be interested in reading more of his work! -
We had not lived in Lansing, MI very long before people referred to the Bath school bombing. I had never heard of Bath, MI or the school bombing. But the history was legend in Lansing.
In 1927 a farmer blew up the new consolidated Bath school, that had 250 children inside. At the same time, his own house and farm buildings blew up. He had murdered his wife and placed her body in one of the farm buildings. He drove to the school to see the carnage and when the Superintendent of Schools came to his car to talk, the farmer set off an explosion in his car, killing them both and killing and harming bystanders.
Forty-four funerals. Nearly the entire Fifth Grade class was dead. Lansing doctors said it was as bad as anything they saw in WWI.
Andrew Kehoe's wife inherited a farm in Bath, MI. They moved in and Kehoe became a good neighbor, involved in the community. When crop values fell he was broke. He focused on the taxes for the newly built school as the cause of his ruin.
Kehoe had an "inventive genius" and exceptional mechanical skills. But a closed head injury may have caused a personality change. He killed his sister's cat. He was seen abusing animals by Bath neighbors and friends. But few suspected he was capable of such evil.
Kehoe collected his explosives. In plain sight, he entered the school where he set up a system of explosives. He remained unemotional and detached even knowing what he was going to do.
Schechter shares the stories of people who heard the explosion and raced to the scene. He narrates the desperate struggle to find the survivors and the awful sight of blasted bodies.
Lansing was fifteen miles away. Victims were taken to the hospitals there, and first responders from Lansing and surrounding communities flocked to help at Bath.
Kehoe had planned his own demise, taking with him the school superintendent.
When Schecter first introduced Charles Lindbergh into the story I was confused. I learned that his historic flight dwarfed the story of the Bath School disaster. It faded into memory as new, lurid murder stories took over the headlines. We do have short attention spans.
Schechter sets the crime in context of the history of mass murderers and serial killers. It was interesting to learn that Kehoe purchased the explosives legally; after WWI, new markets were needed and they were promoted for farm use. A post-war drop in crop profits impacted farmers.
Kehoe's horrific crime of terrorism shocked the rural community of Bath, Michigan, and still appalls today.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. -
While I enjoyed what was in the book, it felt unfinished. There were multiple strands of narrative that didn't ever get tied together. For example, the Charles Lindbergh tangent could have been braided in to the discussion of eugenics, but it is left dangling. Instead there are chapters about his Atlantic crossing with no understanding of why they are included, other than to show it was a popular new item at the time.
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Remarkable that I'd never heard of this story before! For that reason, it's an interesting read, but beyond the standard information, MANIAC never quite goes further. Schechter seems to be attempting to forge connections between modern school shootings, but beyond just stating the facts, he doesn't actually FIND any real connections. There were also strange tangents (why so much about Lindbergh?!) that didn't make sense.
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I won a Kindle copy of this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. I bought the audiobook after starting the book and discovering my other half was also interested in it. We both agreed the narrator, Braden Wright, did a great job with it. The subject is not an easy one to read about. I was in tears when the scene of the explosion was being read. I would have never made it through reading aloud.
The book talks about the bombing of the school in Bath, Michigan in 1927. I did not know about it before this book. The bomber was not a good person. (I am choosing to not name the bomber. I don’t feel like he needs to be remembered.) He had actually planned for a much worse explosion. I can’t even wrap my mind around it. Thankfully not all the explosives went off as planned. The author did a lot of research and wrote a compelling story. He brought up a great many things to think about and talk about.
Would I recommend this book? Absolutely. It’s a sad story. I cried hard, so you may need tissues. I read a lot of true crime books. The bombing and the murder of his wife and horses were so difficult. The message he left behind brings up a very good question. We have been talking about it as well as the reactions of the public afterwards. I mean, buying postcards? Let me know if you read this one. I would like to read your review. -
Not a true crime fan but because school shootings have become so ubiquitous in recent decades, I thought an accounting and analysis of the first such event would be interesting. It was that and horrifying at the same time. The “aggrieved” narcissists now and in1927 who perpetrate these atrocities are often not identified until it’s too late. It illustrates that our mental health services are lacking and our failure to restrict access to materials of mass destruction, be they military firearms or explosives or whatever, needs to be thoughtfully reexamined.
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I received a digital copy from Netgalley for an honest review.
This is one of those books that you know how it's going to end when you start it. It's right there in the title that something horrid is going to happen. Still, as I got to the actual part of the book about the mass killing of school children in Bath, Michigan my heartbroken and couldn't stop reading until I actually finished the book. Though this is the second book I've read by Harold Schechter, this is the one that will stick with me for a while.
What I really liked about this book was how Harold Schechter wrote it. It isn't just facts thrown onto the page and organized in a dry timeline. Instead, Schechter tells the story in pieces. He lays the foundations by telling us the history of Bath, Michigan, and of the Kehoe family. As a reader, you get introduced to people in the town. It's written kind of like a puzzle where you get all the pieces and slowly you see the picture it's forming.
I also really liked that the chapters were small. Schechter draws you a picture of this moment and of this person, then moves on to the next. Sometimes with True Crime, I feel like there is a lot of reputation of facts or a reiteration of something that's already been established. That isn't the case with Maniac and that's what, in my opinion, made this so easy to read. It moves through the timeline of events leading up to the bombing and somehow builds a bit of suspense, at least for me since this is one true crime story I hadn't read.
Another thing I liked about Maniac was how it wasn't just about Andrew Kehoe, the man behind the bombing. Harold Schechter has a whole section about the aftermath of the bombing. He talks about the families, the town, and about other similar crimes that followed. Rarely in the true crime books I've read I have seen that. This wasn't just a book about what drove Kehoe to kill 38 school children, it was also about those that survived, and how this was the start of a horrid trend in our country. So I thought it was great that readers were able to see how Bath, Michigan moved from this terrible event, but never really forgot.
My only real negative about this book was there was a couple of chapters for me that felt like they didn't fit. There were two chapters dedicated to Charles Lindbergh, and I understand that his flight is one of the reasons the Bath School Bombing was pushed out of national headlines, but I didn't feel it warranted two chapters about a man who really had nothing to do with the bombing. There was also a chapter about another crime that set up to explain why the Bath School Bombing was lost to history in a lot of ways, but I didn't honestly feel like we needed an entire chapter dedicated to that crime. I feel like all three chapters pulled away from the events being told and were just sort of the throwaway. In fact, I didn't even read the chapters on Lindbergh and only skimmed the other one.
All-in-all I enjoyed this book and felt it well researched and well presented. Schechter doesn't shy away from the facts or the gore of this book, which there is a bit of gore here and there but nothing excessive. Is it a bit unsatisfying at the end, yes but that has nothing to do with the writing, or construction, of this book. Sometimes the bad guys get an easy end. -
Today’s Nonfiction post is on Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass Killer by Harold Schechter. It is 254 pages long and is published by Little A. The cover is a picture of the school. The intended reader is someone who is interested in historical true crime. There is very mild foul language, no sex, and violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the dust jacket- 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.
Review- A horrific but interesting true crime from the 1920’s. Schechter does excellent research into this forgotten story of the worst mass killing in a school. Andrew Kehoe moved to Bath where his wife was from and they lived there for years without anyone knowing about his true nature. Kehoe was known to be an unpleasant man but he was not killing children or threatening anyone until something snapped. After that the reader watches in horror as Kehoe buys the explosives and sets about placing the bombs all over the school while he continues to work in the school and around the children that he will kill or at least wants to. When the bombs go off and the true horror of what Kehoe wanted to, I was horrified some 90 odd years in the future. This is not an easy book to read, not because of the writing, but because of how horrible the killer and his crime is. I would recommend but it is not for the faint of heart.
I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library. -
‘On 18 May 1927, Andrew P Kehoe dynamited the Bath Consolidated School in Bath, Michigan.’
I had never heard of this mass killing, which resulted in the murder of thirty-eight children and six adults. Who was Andrew Kehoe, and why did he do this?
Mr Schechter’s exhaustive research takes the reader through the history of the area and the history of the town of Bath before chronicling these events.
Andrew Kehoe was, I read, a local farmer and the school board treasurer. He had been a respected member of the community. But a bad year on the farm, followed by a tax for the support of the school led Andrew Kehoe to be elected to the school’s board where he was both disruptive to management and helpful in that his handyman skills saved the school money.
In addition to planting explosives under the school, he set the building on his farm ablaze after killing his wife. He also destroyed the farm equipment and prevented his horses from escaping the fire.
Andrew Kehoe was behind on his mortgage payments and resentful when his re-election to the school board was not supported. He had stockpiled explosives and used them to deadly effect.
How does a town recover from such atrocity? In addition to those murdered, many were injured.
I read this account, understood the ‘how’ but never the ‘why’.
The book also discusses other mass murders, and how such events are viewed by the public. In the case of Bath, this horrific event was overshadowed by the news of Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight:
‘The Bath School Disaster might be described as a “seven-day horror,” although—thanks to the mania surrounding Lindbergh’s flight—its grip on the public imagination didn’t even last a full week.’
Except, of course for those directly affected.
I have read a couple of Mr Schechter’s books because of my interest in true crime. I have mixed feelings about this book. While I appreciated the research, the context setting and the account of events, I wanted answers that neither Mr Schechter nor anyone else can provide. We know what Andrew Kehoe did, and how, but I do not fully understand ‘why’. Perhaps that is a good thing.
Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Little A for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith -
Maniac: The Bath School Disaster and the Birth of the Modern Mass by Harold Schechter is the account of a school massacre and its perpetrator. To this day, the Bath School Disaster is still the deadliest school massacre in the United States with 45 killed (38 students and 6 adults) and 58 injured. It was carried out by Andrew P. Kehoe, age 55, a man who had been planning this revenge for about a year. And, I had never heard of Kehoe or his act of mass murder at the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan until I decided to read this book. What does that say about this country that such an atrocity has been all but totally forgotten? This is painful.
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This is a well researched and extremely informative book about the infamous Bath School Disaster.
Even though this book is packed full of facts, it is anything but a dry read.
If I didn't know that the events detailed in this book were true events, I would have no problem believing it to be a fantastic work of historical fiction.
If you have any interest in true crime, mental illness, history, and/or medical history, you should definitely read this book.
4 out of 5 Stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ -
An interesting book in which I learned about an event I hadn't heard of before. This felt like a brief synopsis of the story so while it was interesting, it seemed a bit short. I would have liked to have learned more about the people involved.
Thank you to Netgalley and Little A for an advanced ebook in exchange for a fair and honest review. -
3.5
