You know that bit in It's Always Sunny where Charlie is explaining the company conspiracy he's come across in front of that huge notice board of threads n papers n shit? That's what this book is

It's light and a little humorous but it's also a mess lmao. When explaining it to Phil he rightly said 'isnt this book about goats??'

It just goes to so many different places, covering different lil US military conspiracies but never really reaching any conclusions. It's all very suggestive and speculative. Like a series of statements goin 'how about this?' 'What about this huh?'

It does get ya into that fun conspiracy theorist mindset and Ronson is definitely playing to this intentionally and bringin some showmanship, but I also think it seems like his starring goats to death story dried up and he had to compensate with padding out from other stories.

The interviews and the people and events involved are rEAL tho and it offers food for thought. Maybe not substantial food. Nibbles. Crisps n dips for thought. Theres definitely some wild shit happening in the military that we know nothin about, and this book dips a fun, easy, commercially accessible toe into it.

This is the craziest non fiction I've ever read in a while.

I mean, crazy!

Normally, the title is click bait and the book itself is fairly staid. Here the book is title++. Every sentence in the book makes you double take and check if its facts being relayed or someone being satirical.

It's facts.

And it's so much fun in a "wtf" kind of way.

Strange, weird subculture of the US military wanting to adopt paranormal techniques in the eighties and even as late as 2000s during the so called war on terror.

Staring to kill goats. Stare to disperse clouds. Subliminal music. Walking through walls. It's got them all.

Never a dull moment. And scary that the world's largest and most powerful army is filled not just with psychopaths (which we know) but people who are just cray-cray like this.

The book itself is 3 for me because there is no coherent plot of progression of any kind. Just a series of uncoverings and perspectives. So it starts to feel repetitive and I felt overdosed with the wtf-ness after a while.

Foarte interesant subiectul si foarte fain documentat, mi-a placut mult mai mult decat ma asteptam.

In dragoste si in razboi totul e permis - autorul ne arata concret cum se poate aplica si in realitate aceasta expresie.

Recomand si filmul, desi sunt cateva abateri de la actiunea din carte :).

I really found it hard to go through this book. Not only it is disjointed with too many unrelated characters, it also does terribly at attempting to be humorous. The topic covered is really interesting, and I understand it is extremely difficult to get any real information due to the nature of how this works, but the author seemed more concerned about highlighting how many wacky people he talked to rather than presenting a coherent story. If this is meant to be a silly "fun" book, it tragically failed in that regard for me.

And for people thinking of still getting this book on Audible, don't! What truly made it unbearable for me was the narration, I recommend you have a listen to a sample clip before purchasing to decide if you're able to listen to 6 hours of that (forgetting about the content). Luckily, Audible accepts returns which I definitely took advantage of for this purchase.

The subject matter of this book is fascinating. It explores the US military's research into decidedly strange fighting and reconaissance techniques: psychic warfare (as in, soldiers using psychic powers to stop the enemy in its tracks), remote viewing, you name it. It starts out fairly lighthearted: look at what happens when you give some whackadoos in the government money to try to walk through walls! There's a serious side to it, though; out of some of the same minds that came up with the more out-there techniques of psychic warfare, came some of the psychological techniques that are being used to manipulate and torture prisoners and insurgent populations.

The execution leaves something to be desired. For one, Ronson is aware that there is both an amusing and a serious side to his research, and points this out from time to time, but Ronson does not work to somehow make these two aspects of the stories he tells play off each other, or to reconcile these two aspects of the subject matter. Instead, the tone of the book is simply wildly uneven, sometimes switching from dead serious to satirical and jokey in the same page or two. The book is also quite rambling, and the overall impression is that it's a series of journalistic articles he wrote, which he then strung together into a book. It just struck me as lazy writing. Still interesting, though.

this was a wiLD ride y’all. I adore Jon Ronson's writing and similar to the psychopath test this book was completely insane, fascinating, hilarious, thought-provoking, entertaining and deeply disturbing all at once!

the only reason I’m giving it 4 stars is because I felt like it didn't flow super well ? and it was often hard to see the connection between all these different anecdotes and the names of all the different people etc.

however that’s a pretty minor thing and I think overall it was a great read and I loved it :)

Yet another fantastic piece from Jon Ronson. Manages to be clever and accurate while also painting very real pictures of these actual people, showing them not as caricatures but as human beings. Plus much of it is just a shit-load of fun. I love wild, spooky stuff, and it’s crazy to think that the government and military are or have at one time been sanctioned and expected to explore that. The book is definitely tinged with poignancy too, particularly when discussing how some of these “fun”, buck-wild ideas are being used to hurt people (or at the very least, were at the time of this book’s writing). But while Ronson acknowledges this with genuine care and gravitas, he manages to keep most of the book quite light-hearted. For sure a recommend! (I also recommend the movie, if you haven’t seen it hahaha)

Since the first time I read The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, I didn't really like the way Jon narrated his story. It felt like he's just a journalist, which he is actually, but his story somewhat felt scattered. And I honestly didn't really like, or care, about the topic. I'm a fool for wasting my precious weekend by reading this book just because my friend gave me the hard copy. A light read indeed, but yeah I could use my 3 hours reading something worth my time.

I may write something on this over on my medium because I find this so interesting. Perfect interplay between comedy and reality; truth being stranger than fiction. Honestly, that the US government reacted to intense demoralization from a war with similar ways in which Hitler desperately sought additional power through similar absurdities, is just so on point for the relationship institutions have when they accrue power and deal with loss of agency.

Anyway, I liked this book a lot lol. If I write a piece I will link it in the review. It may be that the narration boosted this from a 3 star to 4 star book for me. Very good delivery of just wild material. Especially some quotes from people.

I did not find it difficult to follow. It was chronological, though I suppose he goes out of the narration to comment on things sometimes, both for humour or needed context. It felt fairly normal to me, structure wise. It’s the rest that’s whack. People who find some of it devalued because it’s the truth from his perspective and it undermines actual truths, I suppose that’s true to some degree—but not the Point as detailed in the final chapters.

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.

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.

I enjoy Ronson's books, though I found this one even more annoyingly messy and disjointed than his others. There's a lot of interesting, amusing, and horrifying stuff here, but the connections between them are often awkward or unconvincing: the book's origin was as a 3-part documentary TV series, where the episodes need not link so well together.

After finishing, I learnt about how Ronson's producer/researcher/collaborator Jon Sergeant was pushed aside after the book's success. This left me with a sour aftertaste, and certainly makes Ronson appear very selfish. It made me wonder how much Ronson's guilt and anxiety over his actions here led him to The Psychopath Test. Further details here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-i-...