The Men Who Stare at Goats | 
 enlarge | Author: Jon Ronson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.16
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Avg. Customer Rating:  60 reviews
Sales Rank: 52766
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0743270606
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.34340973
EAN: 9780743270601
ASIN: 0743270606
Publication Date: April 4, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: New, unread, unused and in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages, may have a remainder mark.
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Amazon.com
Just when you thought every possible conspiracy theory had been exhausted by The X-Files or The Da Vinci Code, along comes The Men Who Stare at Goats. The first line of the book is, "This is a true story." True or not, it is quite astonishing. Author Jon Ronson writes a column about family life for London's Guardian newspaper and has made several acclaimed documentaries. The Men Who Stare at Goats is his bizarre quest into "the most whacked-out corners of George W. Bush's War on Terror," as he puts it. Ronson is inspired when a man who claims to be a former U.S. military psychic spy tells the journalist he has been reactivated following the 9-11 attack. Ronson decides to investigate. His research leads him to the U.S. Army's strange forays into extra-sensory perception and telepathy, which apparently included efforts to kill barnyard animals with nothing more than thought. Ronson meets one ex-Army employee who claims to have killed a goat and his pet hamster by staring at them for prolonged periods of time. Like Ronson's original source, this man also says he has been reactivated for deployment to the Middle East. Ronson's finely written book strikes a perfect balance between curiosity, incredulity, and humor. His characters are each more bizarre than the last, and Ronson does a wonderful job of depicting the colorful quirks they reveal in their often-comical meetings. Through a charming guile, he manages to elicit many strange and amazing revelations. Ronson meets a general who is frustrated in his frequent attempts to walk through walls. One source says the U.S. military has deployed psychic assassins to the Middle East to hunt down Al Qaeda suspects. Entertaining and disturbing. --Alex Roslin
Product Description
In 1979 a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the U.S. Army. Defying all known accepted military practice -- and indeed, the laws of physics -- they believed that a soldier could adopt a cloak of invisibility, pass cleanly through walls, and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them.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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 55 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.
Donkey Rhubarb, may-tah. June 29, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the run up to the movie, I began emailing Jon Ronson. Within a few months, The Times, a paper who had recently portrayed me as a strangulation fetishist previewed Poppy Shakespeare which seemed to be a controversial challenge to my previous Poppycock Bungalow email to Jon himself.
Swag.
Then there was the Betty tv production of Forgiven with myself as the paedophile which is surprising Jon because you probably knew it was infact my neighbour (veil pulled unicorn) who molested his own daughter. Pub? A sad end to this Lynda La Plante protege and school friend and probably custard cream called Hannah Rothman (Internet Movie Database). What a nasty woman and long may she suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Jewish taunts.
I was poisoned because the film was so important.
 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.
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