No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine High School

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.

Author: Brooks Brown, Rob Merritt
Publisher: Lantern Publishing & Media
Published: 10/01/2002
Pages: 284
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 8.99h x 6.01w x 0.78d
ISBN: 9781590560310

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.9
Point Value: 12
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 78488 / No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine


Award: Rhode Island Teen Book Award - Nominee


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 09/30/2002 pg. 63
Booklist 10/15/2002 pg. 367

About the Author
Merritt, Rob: - Rob Merritt graduated from the University of Iowa School of Journalism in 1998 and currently works as a newspaper writer in Marshalltown, Iowa.Brown, Brooks: - Brooks Brown graduated from Columbine High School in 1999. He consulted on Michael Moore's Academy Award-winning documentary Bowling for Columbine.