"Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing" by Arnie Bernstein; University of Michigan Press (200 pages, $19)

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Ambivalent. That's how I felt after reading "Bath Massacre," Arnie Bernstein's account of "the first school massacre in modern American history." Chicago author Bernstein has done a workmanlike job, but be warned: "Bath" is not bedtime reading. This book needed to be written; I'm just not certain it needs to be read other than in a psych class.

It happened in 1927, in a small farming community 12 miles from Lansing . Andrew Kehoe, a more-or-less normal-seeming farmer, blew up a schoolhouse, killing 37 students and injuring almost 60 others before he blew up himself and the school principal.

Later, the body of Kehoe's wife was found on their farm, burned beyond recognition. The stomach-turning details of charred bodies and strewn viscera may be read at your own risk.

But then one can never underestimate the public's fascination with horror. After the explosion deaths, despite the pleas of the State Police and the mourners, thousands of sightseers descended upon the town.

"In the midst of the chaos, one man snuck through the crowd to the smoking remains of Kehoe's truck. He reached into the ruined cab, clipped himself a (body part), and put his precious souvenir in a jar." It is hard to know who was more mentally unbalanced - Kehoe or some of the sightseers.

No one ever really figured out why Kehoe did what he did. He was termed a psychopath. But, "psychopathic killers," wrote a noted psychologist of the time, "are not mad ..."

The inquest jurors found "that the said Andrew P. Kehoe was sane at all times, and so conducted himself and concealed his operations that there was no cause to suspicion."

Unable to see into a future of Virginia Tech or Columbine - Monday marks 10 years since the Colorado shootings - the pastor of a church in Bath called the tragedy unique.

As to the "why," Bernstein writes, he "looked at all aspects of Kehoe, considering nature versus nurture, criminal psychology, and what he termed 'the hazards of modern civilization.'"

"The nervous and mental strain of our high-speed living are all taking mortal toll," the pastor said. "It is particularly uncertain today that when the family leaves the breakfast table in the morning they will all foregather again at night."