On December 14, 2012, 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., including 20 children barely older than toddlers, were shot and killed. It felt like a line in the sand, on gun violence and safety. Instead, nine years on, Sandy Hook has become a foundational story, and a symbol- of how malevolent, profit-motivated actors use the internet to terrorize the vulnerable, even the families of murdered children, and how conspiracy has gained traction in our world. In the wake of the tragedy, parents of the young victims have been accosted on the street. They are harassed online. They are stalked and forced out of the towns they live in. Someone shot a rifle into the home of one parent. But the conspiracy has asked the victims and survivors themselves to defend that the event even occurred. At the center of conspiracy theorists' crusade is Alex Jones's InfoWars, where hoaxers air noxious theories and raise money. Egged on by Jones, emboldened by online anonymity, his followers' questions grew into suspicion, suspicion into demands for proof, unanswered demands into rage, with a through line straight to January 6. 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 age. 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.