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 has conducted extensive research to explore the lives of these 4 young people and the events of those 4 days in May, when the country was on the brink of tearing apart. Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio is a moving and troubling story about the bitter price of dissent—as relevant today as it was in 1970.