Rating: 
Summary: Read this book!
Review: This book made me think. It brought me right back to my own high school experience. Thankfully, nothing as horrendous as this happened at my school, but I saw the exact same treatment he describes. I commend Brooks Brown for writing this book! I think he hit the nail on the head. Also, his account of April 20, 1999 is so vivid, it is very upsetting. I shuddered when he wrote of his last words with Eric Harris. I also was very appalled when he wrote of the atrocious way he was treated by the police. I have read four other books related to Columbine, as well as collected newspaper clippings and numerous magazine articles. This is by far (and I cannot stress this enough) the best book on the subject. It will really make you think, and will also make you wonder just what is going on at your local high school.
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Summary: Catastrophe at Columbine
Review: This book was a real eye opener for me as far as the justice system and how it works. I was so angry about how the police handled the situation at Columbine. I was also shocked at some of the things that happened. This book is a really good read, and the fact that Brooks Brown was a friend of both Eric and Dylan, it makes it more real because you see his feelings, and his thoughts, and it makes the situation more real because it takes you back to when this happened, and you feel what he feels, and you see his thoughts. It offers this insight from Brooks Brown, as well as interviews with others in the area and newspapers. I think this book was really easy to follow, and it told stories that I hadn't heard before, and they were so interesting, shocking, maddening, and saddening to me. It only took me two days to read it, I couldn't put it down!
Rating:
Summary: A real eye opener about Columbine
Review: This book was a real eye opener for me as far as the justice system and how it works. I was so angry about how the police handled the situation at Columbine. I was also shocked at some of the things that happened. This book is a really good read, and the fact that Brooks Brown was a friend of both Eric and Dylan, it makes it more real because you see his feelings, and his thoughts, and it makes the situation more real because it takes you back to when this happened, and you feel what he feels, and you see his thoughts. It offers this insight from Brooks Brown, as well as interviews with others in the area and newspapers. I think this book was really easy to follow, and it told stories that I hadn't heard before, and they were so interesting, shocking, maddening, and saddening to me. It only took me two days to read it, I couldn't put it down!
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Summary: No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine
Review: This is a fabulous book. I read this with distant memories of my high school years, and was surprised to see some similarities. The bullying still continues. The jocks still rule the schools, and the teachers endorse the attitude of superiority.
This book must have taken a great deal of courage to write. The truth is often difficult to see, and even more difficult to tell honestly and with insight into the true nature of the world. These authors have obviously told the painful truth. I would recommend this book for any parent, teacher, student, counselor or interested adult. It is a rare look into the living high school experience of this generation. Sometimes, as is often the case, the truth was difficult to read. Some of the conclusions reached by the authors made me uncomfortable, in that vague way that only the revealing of hidden truths can. I am, nevertheless, glad that I read this book. I found it educational and full of insight and perceptions that are rare in todays literature.
This is a must read. A courageous book on a very sad subject, that left me with a feeling of hope.
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Summary: A voyeur's dream!
Review: When an event like this occurs, I'm the kind of person who wants to know absolutely everything about it. This book practically put me at scene right there with Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold. Being a psychology student, the best part of the book, I thought, was delving into the childhoods of Eric & Dylan as well as learning about the families. The author wasen't some random person but a student from Columbine who knew Dylan & Eric personally. No punches are pulled here - Just facts. There was nothing about this book that I disliked - fantastic!
Rating: 
Summary: Brooks, Brooks, Brooks.....
Review: While I believe the story itself is compelling and sad, my chief thoughts while reading this book is that Brooks Brown is a whiner, a tattler, and above all a huge attention seeker. He brought a lot of the stuff pertaining to him on himself. I found the book almost tedious, even though I agree with Brooks' thoughts that Columbine and society CREATED those boys, not music lyrics and video games. Still a good look into the facts of the case if you can get past Mr. Brown's attention seeking.
Rating:
Summary: Brooks, Brooks, Brooks.....
Review: While I believe the story itself is compelling and sad, my chief thoughts while reading this book is that Brooks Brown is a whiner, a tattler, and above all a huge attention seeker. He brought a lot of the stuff pertaining to him on himself. I found the book almost tedious, even though I agree with Brooks' thoughts that Columbine and society CREATED those boys, not music lyrics and video games. Still a good look into the facts of the case if you can get past Mr. Brown's attention seeking.
Rating:
Summary: Right on point
Review: While I wasn't impressed with Browns' annoying (and constant) references to Ayn Rand and pastiches of her already less than impressive work in an effort to perhaps conceal emotions too painful to deal with, we are here offered a first person viewpoint of a sensitive, intelligent young man who befriended Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.Brown's primary feeling is that the death of 15 young people at Columbine High School had nothing to do with video games, music, the desire for infamy or anything of the kind. Eric and Dylan were two young men who, in the throes of alienation and despair, combined their legitimate rage at constant mistreatment into an excuse for a quite illegitimate reaction, the vicious murder of 13 other young people. Eric (who Brown seems to feel was disturbed from the getgo) and Dylan, whom Brown suffered through junior high with, became progressively more hateful toward not only the group of morons harassing them at school but humanity in general. We are given some insight into their deteriorating minds when Brown recounts an instance in which they shot a little children with bebe guns on Halloween night--and laughed about it. If Eric and Dylan had simply been evil sociopaths, Columbine as culture shock would be easier to absorb, simply a glitch. But this was not the case. While Eric had anger problems and Dylan was clearly predisposed to violence from a certain age, these tendencies seem to have emerged from two boys who had been rejected one too many times. To my mind at least, this eyewitness narrative takes us right back to the original feelings about Columbine when it occured, that these were two isolated and abhorred young men with something horrific to prove. All the convoluted nonsense about 'fame' goes out the window. This, Brown aptly comments, serves the authorities well in their sweeping dismissal of the idea that something might have actually been wrong with their little community to begin with. The psychological trauma of the incident on Brown is probably indescribable and, to an extent, irreversible. He is commendable, however, for reaching through the haze of mediated lies and excuses to deliver truth in this heartwrenching tale of two boys who degenerated from kids with extreme potential to hopeless murderers.
Rating: 
Summary: Narrowly Focused but Relevant
Review: While this book is an important account of the tragic massacre at Columbine High School from about as close as we are likely to get, Brown unfortunately loses much credibility by committing many of the same injustices that he claims were the root cause of the circumstances that drove his two friends to commit this crime. By labeling anyone who has a viewpoint different from his own as a "corrupt" and a "jerk" Brown seems to be as closed to diversity of opinion and prejudiced against those who are "different" as were the evil schoolmates who bullied and beat his friends into becoming monsters. I will agree that today's high school student possesses the faculty to be as cruel and persecutory as any human being can, but the picture that Brown paints of the injustices at Columbine, if true, would make it I believe unique in it's tolerance of that cruelty. My opinion is that Columbine probably reflected at the time much the same striation of cliques and cultures that any modern American high school does, and Brown himself admits that his opinions and beliefs placed him in a culture that by choice was at odds with authority. Questioning authority is a healthy thing, but taking that thought pattern to the extreme and rejecting all authority without question is what leads a young person to become Eric or Dylan. While trying to explain his views of what went wrong with the investigation into the massacre and indeed what was wrong with the society at Columbine, Brown allows himself to exhibit the very flaws that he points to as at fault. What is truly needed is an investigation into the reasons behind the tendency for American society to categorize people into classes or groups, thus making it easy for the "us against them" mentality to manifest itself, whether it be in the "jocks" or in Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold - or indeed even in Brooks Brown.
Rating:
Summary: This certainly sheds some light...
Review: [This certainly sheds some light...]on, if there can be a "why", this may have happened. I have read articles in the media that reported on the "bullying problem" that existed/exists at Columbine, but this book really brings that issue to life. A school that discourages independent thought is worrisome to begin with, but with the amount of cruelty that was alledgedly tolerated in this building I'm surprised more of it's students didn't [break] out more often. The atmosphere at Columbine before the tragedy seemed absolutely stifling...
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