Among the Bros

A Fraternity Crime Story

By: Max Marshall

Narrated by: Stephen Graybill

“Among the Bros is a harrowing and disturbing book. I have read about fraternity life but nothing like this. This book will blow your mind, each page digging deeper into the unimaginable. Except every word is true.”—Buzz Bissinger, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Mosquito Bowl and Friday Night Lights

A brilliant young investigative journalist traces a murder and a multi-million-dollar drug ring, leading to an unprecedented look at elite American fraternity life.

When Max Marshall arrived on the campus of the College of Charleston in 2018, he hoped to investigate a small-time fraternity Xanax trafficking ring. Instead, he found a homicide, several student deaths, and millions of dollars circulating around the Deep South. He also opened up an elite world hidden to outsiders. Behind the pop culture cliches of “Greek life” lies one of the major breeding grounds of American power: 80 percent of Fortune 500 executives, 85 percent of Supreme Court justices, and all but four presidents since 1825 have been fraternity members. With unprecedented immersion, this book takes insiders inside that bubble.

Under the live oaks and Spanish moss of Travel + Leisure’s “Most Beautiful Campus in America,” Marshall traces several “C of C” boys’ journeys from fraternity pledges to interstate drug traffickers. The result is a true-life story of hubris, status, money, drugs, and murder—one that lifts a curtain on an ecstatic and disturbing way of life. With expert pacing and a cool eye, he follows a never-ending party that continues after funerals and mass arrests.

An addictive and haunting portrait of tomorrow’s American establishment, Among the Bros is nonfiction storytelling at its finest.

©20203 Max Marshall (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Drugs & Frats

If you were around or part of southern Greek culture parts of the story will not surprising to you. But the magnitude of this story and how the author brought so much together in the end was very good.

Good story, but painful narration

The story itself is engaging, but the literal reading of college kids’ text messages and reenactments of conversations left me cringing. I’m glad I finished it, but I definitely won’t be listening to it again.

Fascinating

So, I don’t think of myself as a naive person. I am close to folks in law enforcement and have taught in public schools for almost thirty years. I have a child who recently graduated from a large university (in the South) and was involved in Greek life. As this book progressed, I was shocked over and over again. If half of this is true, and I believe that this book was well researched and corroborated, this story is mind blowing.

Among The Bores

Hours of boring details about “Greek” life at college including in-depth info on their cars, clothes, drug dealing and party lifestyle. I don’t care about Greek culture. Not for it or against it. I came for a true crime murder story. I made it through Chapter 13 and then I just couldn’t listen anymore. Completely lost interest. Instead, I Googled the details of the murder. If you’re interested in the daily drama, drags, and details of Greek life, this is for you.

Not very brotherly story.

It blew me away. Why kids would do this…it’s a different generation. when I was in college. I was in a fraternity if you got caught doing any drugs it was a suspension and then expulsion. I’m sure it was going on but I never saw it back in my days in the late 80s. sad to hear. Joining a fraternity for some is a great way of making lifelong friends. Sounds like these guys join for different reasons.

Well researched & well written

If you were in a frat in the 2010’s, get this book. You won’t be disappointed.

Very interesting and extremely troubling

As a fraternity member in the 1990s at a college in the northeast, there was not a fraction of the drug culture that existed in this book’s thorough reporting in Charleston and surrounding. Or the level of violent hazing. This book takes you on a sad path through wasteful destruction. I honestly had no idea of the depth it went.

Excellent narration by Stephen Graybill and comprehensive investigating by Max Marshall.

Amazing. Horrifying. Unputdownable.

If you think you couldn’t possibly care about rich, entitled, pill-slinging frat boys, you’re wrong. Max Marshall does the Lord’s work in exposing what all of us GDIs already knew about the frats.

The craziest frat stories I have heard

Really enjoyed it. It has everything you could want in a factual tale of drugs, murder and young adults making poor life changing decisions.

I realize how naive I am now…

I loved this book. It’s pretty crazy to me that these types of things go on and almost no one gets held accountable. (Zach’s dad must have some kind of hold on the judges in their state. #darkmoney) I definitely felt sympathy for Mikey but it makes me realize that lots of money creates much worse problems for children than most anything else. Do these parents honestly have no idea how their kids got such fancy cars? Or do they know and think it’s no big deal…there in lies the problem.