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Entrusted with defending America from all known adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on Terror.

With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult from San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions.

Average Customer Rating:

MUST read!	Customer Rating:
I feel this book is written in a very entertaining style, yet, its truths are something we all should be made aware of. Jon Ronson doesn't inflict his opinions on us. I feel he just tells the story and the truths are laid out by the people he interviews who actually lived it. A definite must read. I am going to buy his other book "Them" on Friday!

more than you think

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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

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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

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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?

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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.