Book Review: The Men who Stare at Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I saw the author on Colbert and thought that the book looked good. So I put in on my list of books to read. And I then I saw an ad for a movie based on the book!! And the movie trailer looked really funny too. So I though, "this is going to be a great book! The ads look funny! The book will be funny too!"

No, this book is not funny. This book is about torture. It may start off somewhat lighthearted, but the true moral of the story is that torture has a long history in the U.S. Military and that history is not pretty. While some ideas (like staring at goats to make them collapse) may seem fantastical, so were other ideas like subliminal messages or foam that can be sprayed to immobilize combatants. Those were once crazy ideas, but have been/are being used.

The author tells a story about how the Barney song "I love you" was used to torture while played over and over for 15 hours, and of course the jokes always were "well, any parent of a 3 year old will affirm that they will do ANYTHING to make that song stop". And it seems to say that the author is kind of upset that torture is being brushed aside, being joked about on the The View, that Al Roker is saying "I've been tortured with that song myself".

Which is understandable. However, it almost seems that the author is a hypocrite. Because he starts off his book about a VERY serious subject, with a story about men making goats collapse, and then making a hamster go catatonic and then hate his wheel. It almost seems like he is doing the same thing: He's using a silly story to talk about torture.

That being said, I really liked this book. I really did. I felt that it was so informative and sad and shocking all together. I don't know about the movie though. I wonder if they will go the silly "goats falling over" route, or the more "the CIA killed my father and covered it up because he was torturing people for them" route. Hmmm. I guess I'll wait for Eric D. Snider to see it for me and tell me what he thinks.