A true crime classic, Gary M. Lavergne's book gives the most complete analysis of the man who climbed the tower at the University of Texas in 1966 and shot 45 people, besides killing his wife and mother the night before. Also revealed is the shocking information about Whitman's family life; he was not the all-American young man gone suddenly insane as he was depicted in the media. Instead, the dark secrets of his relationship with his father and his father's own violence is woven into this account of calculated evil. This book has been hailed by experts as an excellent depiction of a case that defined mass murder, the largest mass murder in U.S. history at that time.