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No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at…
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No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine (original 2002; edition 2002)

by Rob Merritt, Brooks Brown

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1634166,344 (4.08)None
Now with a new Afterword on what has happened since the book was first published On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, walked into their school and shot to death twelve students and one teacher, and wounded many others. It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history. Few people knew Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris better than Brooks Brown. Brown and Klebold were best friends in grade school, and years later, at Columbine, Brown was privy to some of Harris and Klebold's darkest fantasies and most troubling revelations After the shootings, Brown was even accused by the police of having been in on the massacre--simply because he had been friends with the killers. Now, for the first time, Brown, with journalist Rob Merritt, gets to tell his full version of the story. He describes the warning signs that were missed or ignored, and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates and explores what it might have been that pushed these two young men, from supposedly stable families, to harbor such violent and apocalyptic dreams. Shocking as well as inspirational and insightful, No Easy Answers is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists, authorities, parents, and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests, the book offers no easy answers, but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today. This edition contains a new afterword that describes what the two authors have experienced and learned about Columbine since the publication of the book.… (more)
Member:roterschnee23
Title:No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine
Authors:Rob Merritt
Other authors:Brooks Brown
Info:Lantern Books (2002), Paperback, 284 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:*****
Tags:None

Work Information

No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine by Brooks Brown (2002)

  1. 20
    Columbine by Dave Cullen (profilerSR, JolieLouise)
    profilerSR: A full account of all aspects of the shooting, and debunks some popular myths.
  2. 00
    We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (JolieLouise)
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Showing 4 of 4
excellent read. very different perspective than sue klebold a mothers reckoning. but she was dylans mom. not his friend. very unfortunate to hear about the local laww enforement and how badly they performed. but who would have expected columbine to happen. skimmed thru some of the book. but read most of it. worth a read. ( )
  FLYERBID | Feb 6, 2017 |
So there seems to be a fairly big divide in those who are interested in learning about Columbine: those who like Dave Cullen's book ("Columbine"), and those who don't. Those who don't like Cullen's work (or think it has an agenda, or that it is untruthful, or whatever) seem to recommend reading this book more, which is the reason that I picked it up in the first place.

Brooks Brown has a unique perspective about what happened in Columbine. He grew up friends with Dylan Klebold, one of the shooters, and was hated by Eric Harris, the other shooter (until the two rather inexplicably made up in their senior year). Brooks could have easily been killed by Eric Harris, but Harris instead told Brooks that he "liked him" and that he should leave. Little did Brown know that the duffel bags Harris was lugging around with him at the time were filled with explosives and guns.

Brooks was also targeted as a potential "suspect," even though there was virtually no evidence that he was, except that his life had been spared by Harris (and, by default, Klebold) and that he had been friends with the pair of them. Reading about what happened during that time, it really does feel like Brooks was maliciously targeted by the Sheriff's department, most likely because his parents DID try to warn the department that Eric Harris was dangerous (something that the department denied repeatedly until solid evidence backing the Browns' claims was brought to light).

Brooks does offer a different perspective than Cullen's; he knew both shooters, and he went to Columbine. Cullen's portrayal of Columbine being this perfect little school on the Front Range always rung a little false to me; come on, we've all been to high school, and I have yet to find one where bullying wasn't rampant. Cullen also seems to think that is one is bullying others, that person cannot be bullied as well; I am not sure how he arrived at that conclusion, but it's not true.

Brooks comes across as a little...I don't know how to describe it, except less-than-truthful. I do have trouble believing some of the things he said (taking credit for a project to "protect" an FBI officer's son, for example), but overall, I think this adds some additional information to Columbine, for those who are interested. ( )
  schatzi | Jun 23, 2016 |
on Friday, July 11, 2008 I wrote about this book:

Finished this 2 days ago. On July 9.
When I started reading this book it felt like I was under a spell or something. Since then I have looked up all kind of info about the shooting, the shooters and the victims.

Downloaded the Columbine Report (11.000) pages.

Very interesting book

10 out of 10 ( )
  Marlene-NL | Apr 12, 2013 |
"I saw my best friend from grade school become a mass murderer."

This is the third book on Columbine I've read this month. The first was heavily steeped in religion, the second was fairly clinical and this one was a first-person account. I think it's been the best of the three, it's certainly been the most enjoyable. I don't know exactly what I expected from this one. I had of course read Brooks Brown's name before and I was aware that he personally knew the two boys who perpetrated the shootings. But once I saw the second author's name I guess I thought that Brooks probably had very little to do with the book, that the publishing industry just wanted his name to sell copies. I was very wrong. Brooks' tale and Mr. Merritt's remarks are separated and I have to say that Brooks writes very well. It's an interesting tale, a well-told one and at the end, it left me with a sense of hope. ( )
1 vote VictoriaPL | Apr 26, 2009 |
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The last time I stood in this spot, the world as I knew it was about to be shattered.
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Now with a new Afterword on what has happened since the book was first published On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, walked into their school and shot to death twelve students and one teacher, and wounded many others. It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history. Few people knew Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris better than Brooks Brown. Brown and Klebold were best friends in grade school, and years later, at Columbine, Brown was privy to some of Harris and Klebold's darkest fantasies and most troubling revelations After the shootings, Brown was even accused by the police of having been in on the massacre--simply because he had been friends with the killers. Now, for the first time, Brown, with journalist Rob Merritt, gets to tell his full version of the story. He describes the warning signs that were missed or ignored, and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates and explores what it might have been that pushed these two young men, from supposedly stable families, to harbor such violent and apocalyptic dreams. Shocking as well as inspirational and insightful, No Easy Answers is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists, authorities, parents, and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests, the book offers no easy answers, but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today. This edition contains a new afterword that describes what the two authors have experienced and learned about Columbine since the publication of the book.

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On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebod and Eric Harris, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, shot to death twelve students and one teacher and wounded many others. It was the worst single act of murder at a school in U.S. history.

Few people knew Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris better than Brooks Brown. Brown and Klebold were best friends in grade school, and years later, at Columbine, Brown was privy to some of Harris and Klebold's darkest fantasies and most troubling revelations. After the shootings, Brown was even accused by the police of having been in on the massacre--simply because he had been friends with the killers.

Now, for the first time, Brown, with journalist Rob Merritt, gets to tell the full version of the story. He describes the warning sings that were missed or ignored, and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates, and explores what else it might have been that pushed these two young men, from supposedly stable families, to harbor such violent and apocalyptic dreams.

Shocking as well as inspirational, No Easy Answers is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists, authorities, parents, and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests, the book offers no easy answers, but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today. [from the cover]
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