linguisticali's review against another edition
dark
fast-paced
1.5
Messy. A lot of this felt like conspiratorial free association, and the tongue in cheek tone really clashed with occasional descriptions of torture.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture
bookishwendy's review
3.0
Author Ronson delves as best he can, interviewing sketchy sources and conspiracy theorists, into the Army's highly classified, defunct (and possibly completely fictitious) First Earth Battalion, that in the early 1980s taught New Age techniques of telepathy to try to create a new type of post-Vietnam peace-loving supersoldier...who may just be able to stare goats to death.
Contrary to my usual procedures, I saw the film first when it came out back in 2009, and only just got around to the book now. And while I liked the book well enough for its quirky Jon Ronsonness, it's just a little too disjointed, the facts too shaky, and while many of the little anecdotes are quite interesting on their own (torture by Barney the Dinosaur, the CIA's ill-fated experiments with LSD as truth serum, the Heaven's Gate cult) none of the threads came together at the end in any meaningful way. I don't remember the film all that well except that it's not really like the book at all--yet I liked it better. I think this is because the film does try to build a story out of the book's disparate segments.
This is a fun little bit of pop-journalism, though I prefer Ronson's more recent book [b:The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry|9378733|The Psychopath Test A Journey Through the Madness Industry|Jon Ronson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1307825196s/9378733.jpg|14262366].
Contrary to my usual procedures, I saw the film first when it came out back in 2009, and only just got around to the book now. And while I liked the book well enough for its quirky Jon Ronsonness, it's just a little too disjointed, the facts too shaky, and while many of the little anecdotes are quite interesting on their own (torture by Barney the Dinosaur, the CIA's ill-fated experiments with LSD as truth serum, the Heaven's Gate cult) none of the threads came together at the end in any meaningful way. I don't remember the film all that well except that it's not really like the book at all--yet I liked it better. I think this is because the film does try to build a story out of the book's disparate segments.
This is a fun little bit of pop-journalism, though I prefer Ronson's more recent book [b:The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry|9378733|The Psychopath Test A Journey Through the Madness Industry|Jon Ronson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1307825196s/9378733.jpg|14262366].
whatsatajahism's review against another edition
3.0
Not as good as 'Them: Adventures with extremists' mainly b/c of the section on Barney being used as a torture device -There was a section where someone was making jokes about it and he laughed constantly. Torture is never funny. Detached myself from what was a very informative and well written back @ that point. Otherwise would have been a 5
everie's review
adventurous
challenging
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
3.75
My first journey into gonzo journalism! I'll have to give more a shot--a really interesting style of investigation.
Swings from legitimately funny to sad to depressing to "hey whatcha got there"
Spoiler
(Abu Ghraib) (Guantanamo Bay)I don't completely buy his idea about how the mostly idealistic psychic soundwave ideas (lol) of the post-Vietnam 1970s ended up being used for torture (or more like sometimes I was intrigued and others it felt like he was trying really hard to make some unrelated dots connect--the torture itself was/is definitely happening) or his willingness to humor the claims of any supposed hamster heart-stopper with an email address, but it was a great, fun read that only got better as it went along. And included some definite truths about the ways the United States has and does mistreat prisoners and proclaimed 'bad guys' without a trial or a thought to human rights.
Also Art Bell mention!
Spoiler
And then the Heaven's Gate connection destroyed meI hope there is actually a slightly better and still eternally doomed psychic spy operation out there. And I bet they DO have better coffee :)
Content Warnings
Moderate: Torture
Minor: Violence