The Men Who Stare at Goats (ISBN 0743270606)

Amazon.com Review:
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

more than you think:
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.

Very interesting read, but is it true?:
I read this book, and I couldn't put it down. It is that interesting! I hope the movie is as good as the book, especially that it was film in my Municipality of Bayamon, Puerto Rico. Anyways, read the book and then go and see the movie!

The dark side of the Army's New Age:
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)

MUST read!:
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!

Entertaining, if unfocused:
After the Vietnam War, as this story goes, the U.S. military was re-examining its tactics. Morale was low, and they badly needed to develop some new strategies and weapons to regain superiority. It was in this context that individuals within the intelligence community successfully pushed for the creation of a super-secret military unit, one that would experiment with honing and weaponizing supernatural and paranormal powers--the ability to walk through walls, turn oneself invisible, read minds and, as the title suggest, kill goats just by staring at them. Ronson states in the first sentence of the book, "This is a true story." It's a much-needed statement, because the book so quickly delves into unbelievable weirdness that it's easy to forget that this is a journalistic endeavor and not a total farce. And in the end, it's more a story of Ronson trying to get to the bottom of this concept of "soldier monks" (as one person calls the paranormal soldiers) than it is a concrete story about the soldiers themselves. Ronson wanders from source to source, some well-informed and some undoubtedly whack-jobs, and story to story. He touches on everything from an elite unit of psychic warriors testing their powers on livestock in a small building at Fort Bragg, to the Heaven's Gate cult, to an alleged CIA murder, to modern psychological torture techniques used in Iraq and Guantanamo. It's these last turns that give the book some weight. Because Ronson follows the story wherever the questions lead him, you might find yourself on one page laughing at a man who claims to be able to stop a hamster's heart with his mind, and then a few pages later contemplating the very definition of torture. Not as cohesive as Ronson's THEM: ADVENTURES WITH EXTREMISTS, and ultimately probably not as successful, but overall a wild and entertaining ride that surprisingly leads to some very topical issues.