Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
 more than you think July 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was a fun read, had some good info but I was hoping it would open up to the bigger stories of the elite (black ops) at fort bragg who are trained with much more super human ability, are all over the world and are in for life. So hope their is a book 2 or someone comes out with all the black dirt and info on the human ability, people need to know how to train and be super human for everday life not just to kill when told to. But I'm very glad this book came out and others will follow. One of the trained elite should write a book under a false name just to let the world know, not of their missions but what and how they advance human ability.
 The dark side of the Army's New Age June 25, 2008
The book follows the U.S. Army's introduction to what later became known as the New Age movement. It explains a lot of the craziness that went on and possibly much of the insanity that has happened recently in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanimo Bay.
You might say it takes you from the Peace Movement to the Bowel Movement!(referencing the mythical "brown note" that the Army has been searching for, not the quality of the book)
 Not a book for goat lovers May 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a sardonic overview of the military's forays into psychics and other mumbo jumbo. The author, Jon Ronson, interviewed officers and psychic pioneers such as General Stubblebine and Jim Channon. (I never heard of them either.) He interacts with them the same way you or I would--with incredulity and attempts to stifle his laughter. In the dialogue, whenever Ronson "ums" or "ers", you can guess what he really wants to tell these people--"Um, you're completely bonkers." Overall, most of the interviewees are portrayed as weirdos. I wonder how they reacted when they read the book and discovered that much of it seems like mockery.
Interspersed in the humor are a few disturbing revelations. It is one think to laugh about the government's funding of bizarre psychic experiments, but it is another thing to consider the horrific outcome of some of those experiments. Ronson gives some examples such as the Waco standoff and the Heaven's Gate tragedy, but I think there are even more personal examples. Most of the interviewees come across as unstable: Is it possible that their immersion in this psychic world intensified or even caused their instability? It's ironic to think that the very people who revolutionized or spearheaded these psychic forays might have been damaged by them. Ronson also offers a unique view of the Abu Ghraib debacle, which makes sense and deserves some more exploration.
The Men Who Stare at Goats is a breezy, satirical, occasionally alarming book, the kind that you can read from cover to cover in an hour or so.
Stumble out of the Box a little? May 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ron Jonson writes in a way that makes you laugh and think at the same time, and leaves you in a small gray space between believing and not. Myself, I've known people as crazy and driven as the people he talks about in this book, so I believe him. I mean, who else could spend all the money we generate?
This is an excellent display of what's outside the 'box', clearly understandable to those still within it, and carries a wit that dissolves the apprehension associated with approaching this, and other subjects of the dark, nasty underbelly of the Legion of mankind.
Disturbing read April 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mr Ronson's book is an eye opening, disturbing, and captivating read. Once you get started and immersed into the book it is hard to put down. The book ventures down some rather dark and disquieting paths. He illustrates how thin the line between good and bad is. In the same vein, right and wrong seems to be irrelevant to many of the subjects covered in the book. The scary part is that someday these guys or their students might actually get it right. All told, the book is a fascinating read.
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