Book Log 2006 #5: The Men Who Stared at Goats by Jon Ronson

This is a stange little book. I read Them: Adventures with Extremists a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it quite a bit. In that book, Ronson hangs out with a variety of "extreme" types, such as radical Islamic clerics in London and ultra-right wingers here in the US. It blended a serious topic - what goes into the mindset of someone who operates on the fringe - with humor, moreso than I expected.

The new book sticks with fringe types, but now within the area of psychological warfare. The goat-starers share pages with remote viewers, a general who thinks that he should be able to walk through walls if he concentrates enough, and connections to the Heaven's Gate cult and the CIA's LSD experiments.

Humor seems less prevalent in this book - still there, but muted a bit. In some ways it's hard not to find humor in some of this, but there's also some concern about how these operations influence the wider fight against terror and how the public doesn't seem to care about their relationship to torture or other mistreatment.

I liked it, but it's not exactly a general interest read.