No Easy Answers

The Truth Behind Death at Columbine High School (20th Anniversary Edition)

By: Brooks Brown

Narrated by: Tyler Christos

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.

Brown with journalist Rob Merritt tells 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 has happened in the United States since Columbine, and provides updates on the aftermath of the massacre.

©2022, 2002 Brooks Brown and Rob Merritt (P)2024 Lantern Publishing & Media

Insight of Columbine

I like hearing the perspective of a student grown up as an adult now vs. to them being younger.

Interesting perspective

It was different to here how it was like from the killers friend. I have read so many others, a lot of same content. Tragic police did not take seriously all the thinks Brooks family told them and others. Listen to the very end, great to hear what has happened since he wrote the book.

Poorly written

First, let me acknowledge that the Columbine massacre was obviously terrible. I can’t imagine the absolute terror and grief that the author went through. Surely, his perspective is unique and important. I do not mean to discount that at all. His story is worth telling and worth reading.
However, this book reads like it was written by an over confident seventeen year old. He seems to really believe in his victimhood in all of this. It’s a bit much, and comes off as immature. Also, why is he constantly switching between first and third person? Didn’t he have a writer working with him? It drove me nuts.

Pure honesty

I have read many books on Columbine and this is truly the only honest, pure, straight from the heart book. The pain and damage these shootings still have on today’s society is pathetic. We as a nation need to do better for our kids.

Not unbiased

2.5 STARS

Brooks Brown was both a close friend of school shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold and a target of Eric’s bullying. He wrote NO EASY ANSWERS not long after the mass murder at Columbine High School with updates after the five and fifteen year anniversaries.

Brooks is not an unbiased observer, nor would anyone in his situation be. He speaks about being outcasts along with his friends, including the shooters, but what he writes about his demeanor and attitude sound more like an entitled young man who thinks the rules don’t apply to him. Perhaps his arrogance hid insecurity. He seems to see himself as every bit of victim as those who were shot or who witnessed the violence first hand.

I’ve read a number of books on the Columbine murders and Brooks’s evaluation of some individuals involved with the school and investigation vary greatly from every other account of those individuals.

What I valued most about the book is the perspective of a peer/ friend of the shooters which include positive aspects of Eric and Dylan in their younger years. So often the boys, especially Eric, are portrayed as one dimensional, all bad or disturbed. While Sue Kliebold’s memoir sheds light on Dylan as a complex individual, we have very insight into Eric. In my opinion understanding the personae of these murderers can lead to early intervention and perhaps prevention. Because Columbine had two shooters who may have spent more than a year planning the murders, the angle of co-conspirators committing a heinous act that neither would have done individually is important as well as the dominant/passive dynamic of the planning.

NO EASY ANSWERS is an interesting account but should be read as being told from a biased perspective balanced with journalistic accounts. Sue Kliebold’s story seems less biased, because she does a deep dive into Dylan’s flaws and what she missed as a parent. She never sounds like a victim.