Published in the aftermath of Columbine and during the height of Australia’s anxieties around censorship, media violence, and youth alienation, Tim Richards traces the recurring cultural fear that books, films, music, games, and subcultures are somehow capable of manufacturing evil.

The book moves through true crime, political reaction, copycat theory, censorship battles, Satanic Panic residue, and the endless desire to locate a clean causal narrative for violence. It captures a culture trying to process the collapse of older authority structures while desperately pretending mass media could still be quarantined like a contaminant.

Reading it now, post-social media and algorithmic radicalisation discourse, the fears are familiar, but the scale has mutated. Richards documents the pre-platform version of the same recurring question: if culture shapes people, who gets blamed when people become monstrous?

2011 Australian paperback, signed by Tim Richards on title page. Very good condition overall with clean pages and light shelf wear.