Bizarre and brilliant!

This book is an exemplary work in investigative journalism, and the amount and quality of painstaking research done by Ronson is outstanding. The central theme is the unconventional and unbelievable methods, including but not limited to, psychic spying, thought manipulation and invisibility for use in the military intelligence.

At times, you get a feeling that you're reading a war thriller novel with a touch of science fiction, only to wonder at last that all these attempts have been real, and the people mentioned are not just characters, but committed officers.

Ronson is so deft with the spellbinding narrative that the suspense he creates with every chapter compels you to turn the pages. He slowly lifts the veils, and leaves a part uncovered only to be revealed in the later pages where it fits logically, especially in the Eric Olson story.

Although the narrative of unearthing some of the chilling secrets of the US military moves back and forth, from 1950s to 2000s, from Cold War to the American debacle in Vietnam to the War on Terror, Ronson manages to maintain a logical structure.

The only thing that stops me from giving this a full 5 stars is that in the middle, there were too many names coming up too fast creating a little bit of mix-up.

Overall, this is a great work to get an insight into those ambitious minds who seriously and literally believed - 'Be all you can be'.

Really not sure about this book. To begin with I thought that it was going to be funny, but it rapidly turned into a repetitive formula of wondering random connections. I lost interest in the book after the second chapter and found it really difficult to motivate myself to get to the end. I breezed through the final chapters but still felt that I had wasted my time when I could have been reading something of value.

Skvela praca. Ak niekto fakt chce vediet, co z filmu je pravda, tak nech si precita toto. Odpoved na otazku je: skurvene vela!

this is the third book of jon ronson’s that i’ve read and it didn’t disappoint! i love how accessible his writing is because non-fiction is often pretty dense and daunting. i flew through this, and its focus on the military - a topic i’m not naturally drawn to - was the only thing which prevented me from giving this a five star

Já toda a gente sabe que os norte americanos são um povo um pouco excêntrico, para não dizer mesmo doido chalado da cabeça - ups, já disse! :D (Só espero que a CIA não esteja a monitorizar o Goodreads, mas dado o acreditarem em psíquicos, não me parece que estejam. :D)

Este livro só demonstra o nível de excentricidade que podem atingir. Caberia na cabeça de alguém criar uma unidade de espiões psíquicos? Pessoas que, supostamente, com o poder da mente e do olhar matariam cabras e fariam com que pessoas em interrogatório vomitassem todos os segredos que sabem? Parece que sim, os americanos fizeram-no. Tanta terra para cavar e esta gente investe dinheiro em supostos psíquicos! E pior, deixa cabrinhas inocentes mudas! Balha-me Deus!

Também temos um programa da CIA da década de 1950 em que dariam LSD e outras dorgas às pessoas fazendo com que elas, devido à dependência e às alucinações, estivessem dispostas a revelar o que sabiam. Tanto livro para ler e esta gente a dar trips às pessoas!

A parte que eu achei mais séria foi a situação dos inimigos da América capturados no Iraque, após a invasão devido às supostas armas de destruição, que foram sujeitos a torturas e humilhações, e eu isto lembro-me de ver nas notícias. Prisioneiros nus, com trelas e outras alarvidades. Confesso que não estava à espera desta parte mais séria num livro com um título tão curioso.

Nesta leitura ficou também provado que ouvir músicas infantis é uma excelente forma de tortura e que os pais dos rebentos têm razão se à conta disso cometerem um homicídio. O facto deveria servir como atenuante, pois parece que é uma coisa que existe. Os americanos usaram o Enter Sandman dos Metallica em altos berros como forma de tortura aos prisioneiros iraquianos, mas também usaram uma canções de programas infantis - do dinossauro Barney e da Rua Sésamo. Parece que é mais eficaz do que choques elétricos!

Claro que a opinião pública norte americana ao tomar conhecimento desta parte levou o caso como uma piada e o autor das músicas da Rua Sésamo preocupou-se foi com os royalties das músicas, já que as mesmas tocadas em loop durante dias renderiam uns bons trocos.

Não foi uma grande leitura esta pois acho que o autor começa a escrever sobre a unidade das cabras e outros assuntos sem uma introdução, pelo menos a mim fez-me falta um preâmbulo qualquer que explicasse o porquê deste livro, o que iria abordar. Em certas alturas senti-me um pouco perdida, pois saltava de assunto e de pessoas sem um enquadramento prévio, mas também não se pode esperar muito de um livro que aborda estas situações absurdas.

- O que é que vai acontecer?
- Vamos todos morrer! Disse o Ed. Riu-se

A única coisa acertada lida neste livro!

#circulalivros Obrigada, Cristina! :)

ik vind jon ronson echt een topper. dit boek wat minder.

staan hele interessante verhalen in maar werd uiteindelijk in mijn ogen een rotzooitje van namen en gebeurtenissen die ik niet meer uit elkaar kon houden. dus misschien liggen deze twee sterren vooral aan mezelf.

maaaar nog steeds zin om alles van Ronson te lezen!

I bought this because I loved the movie, but gave up half-way through.

It's too matter of fact to be effectively satirical, and too silly to be taken seriously. I found myself getting bored. Time to move on to one of the many other titles on my TBR list.

For anyone else who is considering this based on having seen the film - the book is very different structurally, though it deals with the same basic themes.

By far the strangest non-fiction book I've ever read. I'm telling myself that it's made up, becuase I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around it otherwise.

I was fooled. The first couple of pages were hilarious and I thought this is it...the golden ark of dark comedy with a splash of reality and a moral lesson to boot.

But no!!

Well because it ends being a conspiracy rant about how hippies in the 70's are responsible for all the bad things that Americans have recently been caught doing in the middle east. All because the American army has taken the loving intentions of the hippies to play soothing music and deliver teddy bears and interpreted it as - lets chain people in steel freight containers and play loud music repetitively until their ears bleed. It is so blindingly obvious - I don't know why I didn't think of it myself. Of course the hippies are to blame.

I also personally love the level of investigative journalism that he goes to. This is a man who will not stop at anything for the truth, and will go to the ends of the world to dig up the facts. Take for example the one e-mail he sent to uncover the truth about whether a psychic's prediction resulted in an actress being followed up by the military. He didn't get a response. End of.

On a side note and not being one to pass up a learning opportunity. Never end a sentence with a preposition - like I did just there 'End of'. And there. Or there. 'There' is an intransitive preposition but is sometimes thought to be an adverb. So whatever your persuasion be careful with your 'there's and 'of's.

Bottom line you don't need to read this book to realise hippies are evil.

It's hard to know what to say about this book as it's a light-hearted, somewhat mocking look at the various nefarious schemes of the American Military, or at least of some of the specialised recherche departments of Intelligence. However, the subject is deadly serious and what seems funny on the surface - bombarding Iraqi prisoners with an endless loop of the Barney song, 14,000 renditions over three days - really isn't when you consider that this 'information' was probably released deliberately so the media could do a nice, feel-good, hahaha piece and be put off delving deeper, at least for a while.

It's an interesting, perhaps even necessary, book for all Americans, and citizens of its allies and satellite countries, who want to know of the less-obvious methods used in the defence of the US and free world. We all know about military offensives, about assassinations and torture, both always denied, but really though, what do we know about psychological warfare?

It seems to have developed from the original barmy colonel whose thought-process went something like this: this wall is primarily composed of atoms, and atoms are primarily composed of space. I am primarily composed of atoms, and therefore I should be able to walk right through that wall if I only have the right frame of mind. Result: bruised nose and the development of a new Intelligence unit for the US Military and a new way to divert tax dollars into the hands of the less-than-mentally competent who had such seniority no one could question one or their methods. Including staring at goats.

It's a fast read, well-written in a journalistic style with plenty of moments when you'll want to look up from the book and share what you've just read with anyone around.

Rewritten 24 July, 2016 on rereading Them: Adventures with Extremists

Don't bother, I wish I hadn't.

"The Pentagon wanted their soldiers to achieve more with less money. Learning how to walk through walls was an ambitious but inexpensive enterprise."

I laughed a hell of a lot during my read. (I stopped laughing when it came to Abu Ghraib, but Ronson didn't.) Can non-fiction be farce or satire?

More importantly, is a book non-fiction when it's packed full of rumour and conspiracy theories. There was so much "I heard this from..."

"Most goat-related military activity is still highly classified."

The narration by Sean Mangan was very good.

The incredibly strange but (possibly) true story of how top Pentagon officers became enamored with New Age beliefs as a ticket to creating psychic super-powered soldiers who can walk through walls and kill goats just by staring at them. It starts off twisted and hilarious, then gets more grim as Ronson starts drawing lines between the infamous MK-ULTRA experiments and Abu Ghraib. The details and reliance on mostly anecdotal evidence make it easy for Bush apologists to write Ronson off as another batshit conspiracy theorist, but as Ronson himself alludes in the book, the real point may be that we DON’T know the full extent of the truth of what the US intelligence community does, and that history is written by the people who put the first spin on a story. Recommended if only to get an argument going.