Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio

by Derf Backderf

Overview

From Derf Backderf, the bestselling author of My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, comes the tragic and unforgettable story of Kent State—winner of the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Book—now in paperback

WINNER—
2021 ALA/YALSA Alex Award Winner for Teen Readers and Adult Books
Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Book
Ringo Award for Best Non-Fiction Comic Work
ACBD Critics Award in France

NAMED BEST OF 2020 BY—
The New York Times, Forbes, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, PopMatters, Oklahoman, the Beat, the Comics Journal, and more!

NOMINATED FOR—
The Angloulême Prize
Harvey Award—Book-of-the-Year
Ringo Award—Best Original Graphic Novel
Ringo Award—Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist): Derf Backderf

On May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard gunned down unarmed college students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University. In a deadly barrage of 67 shots, 4 students were killed and 9 shot and wounded. It was the day America turned guns on its own children—a shocking event burned into our national memory. A few days prior, 10-year-old Derf Backderf saw those same guardsmen patrolling his nearby hometown, sent in by the governor to crush a trucker strike. Using the journalism skills he employed on My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, Backderf conducted extensive interviews and research to explore the lives of these four young people and the events of those four days in May, when the country seemed on the brink of tearing apart. Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio was initially published in hardcover in time for the 50th anniversary of the massacre. As the events of the final days of the Trump administration unfolded, it became clear that this moving and troubling story about the bitter price of dissent was as relevant to our times as it was in 1970.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781419765469
Publisher:	ABRAMS
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.25(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Derf Backderf is the bestselling, award-winning author of My Friend Dahmer and Trashed. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

What People are Saying About This

Bill Griffith

“Derf Backderf's masterful Kent State does what really good, in-depth journalism should always do—breathe life into cold, hard facts—but in this case, with searing, memorable images, drawings that put us inside the skin of the protagonists. The students and the soldiers are all tragic figures in this telling, and Backderf lets us decide how to judge them. The final, violent scenes are almost Goyaesque in their brutal reality. You don't simply put this book down and get on with your life after reading the final page—you slowly recover, shaken from the experience.”

Editorial Reviews

Kent State, unfolding in sober black and white, is as passionate as it is meticulous in its treatment of the May 4, 1970 killings of four unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard.

The New York Times Book Review

One of the masterpieces of the medium...a work of devastating emotional impact.

Forbes - Rob Salkowitz

"Deeply researched and gut-wrenching…

The New Yorker

The book not only illuminates history but also brings a form of closure to an unforgivable, inexcusable episode.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The meticulous research is shown in more than two dozen pages of notes, confirming the sources from the Kent State University May 4 Collection about the shootings, but also Backderf’s personal research and interviews.

The Akron Beacon Journal

Derf Backderf brings historical context and a propulsive sense of narrative to this graphical history of the Kent State shootings.

book critic - Etelka Lehoczky

★ 12/09/2019

Backderf (My Friend Dahmer) delivers a provocative, heartbreaking account of the days leading up to the infamous tragedy of May 1970, in which National Guardsmen killed four unarmed students and injured nine others at a Vietnam War protest on the Kent State University campus. Backderf conducted extensive research to explore the lives of the four students, revealing their hopes and dreams for the future—portraits that sharply rebut the politically motivated smears politicians and media outlets inflicted upon them after the incident. Though wholly sympathetic to the student protestors, Backderf also takes care to report the grueling conditions the National Guardsmen were forced to endure; their lack of training for de-escalation versus battlefield deployment; and the failings of leaders such as Ohio governor Jim Rhodes (a Nixon loyalist) and Gen. Robert Canterbury. Both men’s anger and paranoia toward antiwar activists stoked their emotion-driven directives to the exhausted, agitated guardsmen and fueled an already highly volatile situation. Backderf’s tightly drawn, muscular figures and busy layouts anchored by choice period details are consistent with his established style, with flourishes (from hairstyles to smirks) that individualize the ensemble cast. His expertly crafted chronicle of this defining moment in U.S. history serves as a deeply moving elegy for the victims. Readers may also draw from it sobering parallels to the deep divisions of contemporary times, again dangerously rife with media noise and misinformation muddying the waters. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

While removed from the events by a half-century, by the time the memoir spirals into the final spasm of chaos, the tragedy these boldly drawn panels feel fresh as if from yesterday's news.

PopMatters

“Kent State is meticulously researched…Backderf is in total artistic control of his material.

Cleveland Review of Books

Surely the graphic novel of the year, and an early entry onto the next Best of the Decade lists.

Forbes

[Backderf’s] expertly crafted chronicle of this defining moment in U.S. history serves as a deeply moving elegy for the victims. Readers may also draw from it sobering parallels to the deep divisions of contemporary times, again dangerously rife with media noise and misinformation muddying the waters.”—Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review

“An incendiary corrective to the myths and misconceptions surrounding these events and a memorial to the lives lost or forever altered that should be required reading for all Americans.”—Library Journal - STARRED review

“Derf Backderf's masterful Kent State does what really good, in-depth journalism should always do—breathe life into cold, hard facts—but in this case, with searing, memorable images, drawings that put us inside the skin of the protagonists. The students and the soldiers are all tragic figures in this telling, and Backderf lets us decide how to judge them. The final, violent scenes are almost Goyaesque in their brutal reality. You don't simply put this book down and get on with your life after reading the final page—you slowly recover, shaken from the experience.”—Bill Griffith, author of Zippy the Pinhead, Invisible Ink, and Nobody's Fool

"Deeply researched and gut-wrenching…”—The New Yorker

“One of the masterpieces of the medium...a work of devastating emotional impact.”—Rob Salkowitz, Forbes

“The meticulous research is shown in more than two dozen pages of notes, confirming the sources from the Kent State University May 4 Collection about the shootings, but also Backderf’s personal research and interviews.”—The Akron Beacon Journal

“Kent State is meticulously researched…Backderf is in total artistic control of his material.”—Cleveland Review of Books

“Derf Backderf brings historical context and a propulsive sense of narrative to this graphical history of the Kent State shootings.”—Etelka Lehoczky, book critic

“The book not only illuminates history but also brings a form of closure to an unforgivable, inexcusable episode.”—The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Kent State, unfolding in sober black and white, is as passionate as it is meticulous in its treatment of the May 4, 1970 killings of four unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard.”—The New York Times Book Review

“While removed from the events by a half-century, by the time the memoir spirals into the final spasm of chaos, the tragedy these boldly drawn panels feel fresh as if from yesterday's news.”—PopMatters

“Surely the graphic novel of the year, and an early entry onto the next Best of the Decade lists.”—Forbes

From the Publisher

★ 02/01/2020

Backderf (Trashed) here relies on meticulous research to re-create the horrific National Guard occupation of the Kent State University campus in May 1970. Fears that student radicals might be preparing to rise up in armed insurrection are inflamed after a group incensed by the invasion of Cambodia riots on the evening of May 1, leading to a State of Emergency being declared. A protest outside the campus ROTC headquarters the following evening ends with a campus-wide lockdown by the National Guard. A sit-in to protest the occupation the next afternoon results in the students being beaten and bayoneted. By the afternoon of May 4, some students are eager to join a rally against the Guardsmen, some are too scared, others simply want everything to blow over so they can resume their normal lives. By the end of the day, exhausted and terrified National Guardsmen operating under orders from inept leaders will kill four and wound nine others. VERDICT An incendiary corrective to the myths and misconceptions surrounding these events and a memorial to the lives lost or forever altered that should be required reading for all Americans.

Library Journal

03/01/2020

Gr 8 Up—In the midst of the divisive Vietnam War, Ohio's Kent State University was a haven for free thinkers and creatives who were fed up with compulsory enlistment and didn't believe that the United States' military involvement in Vietnam was about "keeping Communism at bay." On April 30, 1970, Nixon informed the nation that the United States would be invading Cambodia and that the war would ramp up instead of winding down. Protests were organized, including one at Kent State, prompting chaos and violence. The mayor of Kent begged the governor to send in the Ohio National Guard, and two days later, as the smoke cleared, four unarmed young college students lay dead and more than half a dozen were seriously injured. Compiling firsthand accounts, interviews, news articles, and photographs, Backderf skillfully recounts almost by the hour everything that occurred between Nixon's announcement and the aftermath of the shooting. The amount of text is a little daunting at times, but readers will be riveted by the black-and-white comics and strong linework. Revealing malice, panic, fear, and frustration, Backderf's depictions of people tell the story as powerfully as any eyewitness and will make readers crave even more information. VERDICT Fans of the author's My Friend Dahmer won't be disappointed. Students learning about the Vietnam War will find this vivid exploration of history a welcome supplement to dry textbooks.—Michael Marie Jacobs, Darlington School, GA

School Library Journal