Slate , "25 Best Crime Books, Podcasts, and Documentaries of All Time" Vanity Fair’s “Books We Can't Stop Thinking About” Carnegie Medal Nonfiction Longlist 2023 The Washington Post Best Non-Fiction Books of 2022 Publishers Weekly Best Books 2022 Kirkus Best Non-Fiction Books of 2022 Slate Best Books 2022 Chicago Tribune Best Books 2022 Los Angeles Times Best Books 2022 Based on hundreds of hours of research, interviews, and access to exclusive sources and materials, Sandy Hook is Elizabeth Williamson’s landmark investigation of the aftermath of a school shooting, the work of Sandy Hook parents who fought to defend themselves, and the truth of their children’s fate against the frenzied distortions of online deniers and conspiracy theorists.  On December 14, 2012, a gunman killed twenty first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Ten years later, Sandy Hook has become a foundational story of how false conspiracy narratives and malicious misinformation have gained traction in society.   One of the nation’s most devastating mass shootings, Sandy Hook was used to create destructive and painful myths. Driven by ideology or profit, or for no sound reason at all, some people insisted it never occurred, or was staged by the federal government as a pretext for seizing Americans’ firearms. They tormented the victims’ relatives online, accosted them on the street and at memorial events, accusing them of faking their loved ones’ murders. Some family members have been stalked and forced into hiding. A gun was fired into the home of one parent.  Present at the creation of this terrible crusade was Alex Jones’s Infowars, a far-right outlet that aired noxious Sandy Hook theories to millions and raised money for the conspiracy theorists’ quest to “prove” the shooting didn’t happen. Enabled by Facebook, YouTube, and other social media companies’ failure to curb harmful content, the conspiracists’ questions grew into suspicion, suspicion grew into demands for more proof, and unanswered demands turned into rage. This pattern of denial and attack would come to characterize some Americans’ response to almost every major event, from mass shootings to the coronavirus pandemic to the 2020 presidential election, in which President Trump’s false claims of a rigged result prompted the January 6, 2021, assault on a bastion of democracy, the U.S. Capitol. The Sandy Hook families, led by the father of the youngest victim, refused to accept this. Sandy Hook is the story of their battle 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 is the definitive book on one of the most shocking cultural ruptures of the internet era. Praise for Sandy Hook “[A] persuasive and heartbreaking new book.”— Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road , for the New York Times Book Review "Williamson’s book is not exactly about the shooting. It’s about the wrongs committed afterward... Increasingly in our connected world, a terrible crime can be followed by terrible cruelty; Williamson’s story feels more urgent by the day." — Slate , "25 Best Crime Books, Podcasts, and Documentaries of All Time" “Filled with the most impeccable details—the ones that rarely make it into tight news reports—Williamson draws on documented facts to paint pertinent portraits of the families and victims of the December 14, 2012, shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. . . . Conspiracies and our post-truth reality are topics that have become evergreen, making Sandy Hook one of the most important books of 2022.” — Associated Press "Disturbing and important . . . A feature writer at The New York Times, Williamson is a compassionate storyteller and a thorough reporter who never loses sight of the larger issues Newtown presents."— NPR “Meticulously reported . . . Williamson has produced heartbreaking portraits of the parents. . . . It is hard to read this book without being utterly terrified—in many ways, it’s the scariest I’ve ever read.”— Barbara Demick for The Washington Post “In her deeply researched and painfully compelling book, Williamson makes the smart choice not to fulminate over the many florid misdeeds of Jones and his lesser-known collaborators. Instead, she coolly assembles a great wall of evidence and observation, calmly documenting Jones’s myriad lies, and describing his gonzo shenanigans with an often amusing sobriety. . . . One of the particular strengths of Sandy Hook is that it offers many in-depth accounts of and interviews with Sandy Hook hoaxers, a motley crew of misfits and crackpots. . . . [Williamson] found [Alex Jones] and his rants about the First Amendment shopworn and 'tiresome,' but her masterful description of the encounter is anything but. . . . The courtroom victories of the Sandy Hook parents against Jones and his cronies makes for a satisf