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The Men Who Stare at Goats

3.5 of 5 stars 3.50 · rating details · 4,348 ratings · 607 reviews

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...more

Paperback, 272 pages

Published April 4th 2006 by Simon & Schuster (first published 2004)

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Nov 12, 2008 brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

during the cold war the cia was engaged in some strange strange shit -- psychic spies and remote viewings and lots more: agents staring at goats all day long trying to make their hearts explode (some of the higher ups claim to have seen it happen), agents (with badly scuffed noses and foreheads) trying to walk through walls, dosing people with lsd, playing music with subliminal messages, entering the bad guy's lair while cradling a baby lamb in one's arms as a means to overpower the enemy with s...more

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Jun 15, 2010 Kemper rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: craptacular, military, non-fiction

After watching the movie version of The Men Who Stare At Goats, I figured that there must be a kernel of truth to it coated with several layers of Hollywood bullshit so I read the book to get an idea of what the real story was. I thought I’d get a funny story about some stupid things the military did once upon a time. Instead, the book turns into a template for starting conspiracy theories that really pissed me off.

Oddly enough, the really weird stuff that happened in the film version is the stu...more

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May 31, 2011 Petra X rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: popculture-anthropology

Its hard to know what to say about this book as its a light-hearted, somewhat mocking look at the various always-nefarious schemes of the American Military, or at least of some of the specialised recherche departments of Intelligence. However, the subject is deadly serious and what seems funny on the surface - bombarding Iraqi prisoners with an endless loop of the Barney song, 14,000 renditions over three days - really isn't when you consider that this 'information' was probably released deliber...more Its hard to know what to say about this book as its a light-hearted, somewhat mocking look at the various always-nefarious schemes of the American Military, or at least of some of the specialised recherche departments of Intelligence. However, the subject is deadly serious and what seems funny on the surface - bombarding Iraqi prisoners with an endless loop of the Barney song, 14,000 renditions over three days - really isn't when you consider that this 'information' was probably released deliberately so the media could do a nice, feel-good, hahaha piece and be put off delving deeper, at least for a while.

It's an interesting, perhaps even necessary, book for all Americans, and citizens of its allies and satellite countries, who want to know of the less-obvious methods used in the defence of the US and free world. We all know about military offensives, about assassinations and torture, both always denied, apart from the Barney song. (Geez what hell that must have been - all mothers will nodding here). Really though, what do we know about psychological warfare and what has developed from the original barmy colonel whose thought-process went something like this: this wall is primarily composed of atoms, and atoms are primarily composed of space. I am primarily composed of atoms, and therefore I should be able to walk right through that wall if I only have the right frame of mind. Result: bruised nose and the development of a new Intelligence unit for the US Military and a new way to divert tax dollars into the hands of the less-than-mentally competent.

It's a fast read, well-written in a journalistic style with plenty of moments when you'll want to look up from the book and share what you've just read with anyone around. Recommended for a liberal-minded person travelling with a right-winger they don't much like. Shit-stirrer me!

Rewritten 31 May, 2011 because I rewrote the review for Them: Adventures with Extremists also by Ronson, and I'm sort of feeling a bit conspiracy-minded right now(less)

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Aug 10, 2008 Rhys rated it 3 of 5 stars

I hardly ever read non-fiction, I don't know why. I often enjoy non-fiction more than fiction. Maybe it's because I *write* fiction myself. I do occasionally read history books, but rarely cover to cover. This one is an exception: but it's not just history, it's also investigative journalism of the highest calibre.

This astonishing book tells the recent history of US Military psychic warfare, a very shady area that overlaps with PsyOps (psychological warfare), Black Ops (secret assassination squa...more

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Nov 09, 2009 Russell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: political

So here's my problem with this book. The author manages to string together a long series of random tidbits in what appears to be a coherent manner, but ultimately there was no point to anything we as readers have learned. "Hey everyone, look at all of the weird things our armed forces experimented with during the war on terror! They played a Barney song over and over! They played a Sesame Street song and the composer tried to sue for royalties! Maybe the CIA killed someone once or maybe they gav...more

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Oct 02, 2010 Callista rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

I had this book on my radar because of a review I saw soon after it came out, long before they made the movie. But I saw the movie before I got around to buying the book. I liked the movie a lot; it made me laugh.
[later] I felt compelled to do some research while reading this book. I looked at Jim Channon's and Lyn Buchanan's websites; got Google pages full of results for "remote viewing", "PsyOps", and other terms and people; and saw that Amazon sells copies of Lyn Buchanan's and Joe McMoneagle...more I had this book on my radar because of a review I saw soon after it came out, long before they made the movie. But I saw the movie before I got around to buying the book. I liked the movie a lot; it made me laugh.
[later] I felt compelled to do some research while reading this book. I looked at Jim Channon's and Lyn Buchanan's websites; got Google pages full of results for "remote viewing", "PsyOps", and other terms and people; and saw that Amazon sells copies of Lyn Buchanan's and Joe McMoneagle's books, as well as what's supposed to be a printout of Jim Channon's "First Earth Battalion" report to the Army.
Any good idea can possibly be warped into something dangerous. There are always people within any large group who are willing to try anything, so I believe that people within the government and the military have considered an idea like remote viewing for their arsenals. I know how certain sounds I consider unpleasant affect me, so I believe that prisoners have been subjected to sounds or music. But there are a lot of things that no one can prove or disprove in the book. Channon, Buchanan, and others may be sincere...or they may be crazy...or they may be con artists. While there is a weird fascination factor to reading the stories of people far out in left field, we can't know if they're true; and many of the folks featured in the book are downright shifty. There are people who believe in remote viewing even though none of the visions they, or people they know, have had ever came true. There is no proof that anyone ever stared a goat--or even a hamster--to death. It's like any other matter of faith--it requires faith, because you can't prove it.
While Ronson's attempt to tie certain events to Channon's "FEB" writings is interesting, I think he spent too many pages on the mystery of what happened to Eric Olson's father. Ronson certainly showed how Eric's life had been taken over by the mystery; but the teenage bike trip story and some of the rest of it seemed more like a tangent. The end of the book sort of fizzles out.
About the movie: Consider the movie "inspired by" the book. Certain parts of the book--mostly the funnier incidents--were incorporated into the movie's plot. All the people's names were changed in some way; people's actions and attributes were blended to create movie characters; and events were created to further the plot. Ronson never got to tag along with anyone on a trip to Iraq and never engaged in any daring escape attempts.(less)

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Sep 15, 2008 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: humorous, thrillers, non-fiction

Jon Ronson looks at army intelligence experiments in psychic phenomena. One of these experiments, refered to in the title, was to try to kill goats by concentrating on them, real hard. Ironically, much of this stuff had its origins in the army's post-Vietnam funk, when esprit de corps was at its lowest ebb. A young colonel convinced his chain of command to allow him to study hippy philosophy as a potentially new ethic for a revived Army. All that came of this was a field manual for something cal...more Jon Ronson looks at army intelligence experiments in psychic phenomena. One of these experiments, refered to in the title, was to try to kill goats by concentrating on them, real hard. Ironically, much of this stuff had its origins in the army's post-Vietnam funk, when esprit de corps was at its lowest ebb. A young colonel convinced his chain of command to allow him to study hippy philosophy as a potentially new ethic for a revived Army. All that came of this was a field manual for something called the "First Earth Battalion," which emphasized peace and love, empathy and psychology, over force; it also incorporated the new age psychic and therapeutic practices which had entered the popular culture of the 60s and 70s.

While top commanders took a pass, a few people, mainly in intelligence and special operations circles, were fascinated. This interest was indirectly given a boost by George Lucas. Some of the soldiers and veterans Ronson spoke with likened themselves to Jedis.

Like a lot of Ronson's work, this book uses humor to draw the reader into some serious areas. The general who practices walking through walls (with predictable results) is amusing. Military interrogators, playing the Barney theme song ("I love you, you love me...") to Iraqi detainees is surreal. It's funny, but things get subtly and progressively disturbing, until we find ourselves in Abu Ghraib, and suddenly it's not funny at all. Ronson relates how the hippy-dippy approach to winning hearts and minds evolved into an emphasis on interrogation and brainwashing, using loud music, subliminal messages, psychological humiliation, psychotropic drugs, and far, far worse.

One might ask, if a self-described British humor journalist can ferret out this stuff, why can't the big-time, serious journalists do it, too? Granted, some of Ronson's story is wide open to interpretation. Some of it is just beyond bizarre, and in that may lie the answer to the question. Reporting on intelligence and national security matters is difficult. Legitimate intelligence is not conducted in the open, and so-called black ops, even less so. Plus, there are laws governing the dissemination of classified material. Yet, some of the awfulness of Abu Ghraib was photographed by the perpetrators and splashed all over the media; some of the unpleasantness at the detention center at Guantanimo has been hinted at. It makes a sensation, and then goes away.

Part of the difficulty in reporting this is the problem of defining torture. Are stress positions torture? Loud music? Solitary confinement? The fact that we use these techniques to train our own special forces soldiers further complicates the question. Also, given the past actions of some captives, it's sometimes tempting to deny pity for them. It's relatively easy to label as torture the infliction of pain and write about it. But what about a feeling of hopelessness arising from not knowing whether one will ever be released? That's harder to convey in a soundbite.

Ronson brings up a particularly insightful point when he states that, when confronted with challenging revelations, we fit it into what we already know (or think we know); what doesn't fit, we discard. We all do it to some extent, and journalists are no exception. Many of the journalists I have known are a little lazy in their jobs (like many of us), and would prefer to go for the easy cliche than anything challenging a preconceived worldview.

Ronson points out that we already accept the concept that the CIA does nasty things, that war brings out the worst in some people. We "know" this because we've already read Tom Clancy and John LeCarre. We are appalled by the idea of torture, but we've seen it on 24 with that hunky Jack Bauer, so it doesn't appall us that much. This demonstrates that a story will be subsequently shaped by the way in which it is first spun. Also, when reporters found out that the Barney song was part of the supposed torture, it all seemed too funny to be taken seriously. We like the idea of terrorists being subjected to the purple dinosaur; after all, our kids have made us sit through it.(less)

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Jun 03, 2008 Kirsten rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, crackpots, non-fiction

The subject matter of this book is fascinating. It explores the US military's research into decidedly strange fighting and reconaissance techniques: psychic warfare (as in, soldiers using psychic powers to stop the enemy in its tracks), remote viewing, you name it. It starts out fairly lighthearted: look at what happens when you give some whackadoos in the government money to try to walk through walls! There's a serious side to it, though; out of some of the same minds that came up with the more...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Ben Hallman rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You cannot accuse Jon Ronson of being dull, that’s for sure. His books consistently shed light on the fringe elements of society, be it psychopaths, Icke-followers, or the psychic soldiers depicted here. And he treats the subjects of his investigations with respect and a refreshing open-mindedness, regardless of how nutty the fruitcakes therein may be. But, in the case of The Men Who Stare At Goats, there’s a lack of cohesion to the final product. I enjoyed this book, but I’m not sure what point...more You cannot accuse Jon Ronson of being dull, that’s for sure. His books consistently shed light on the fringe elements of society, be it psychopaths, Icke-followers, or the psychic soldiers depicted here. And he treats the subjects of his investigations with respect and a refreshing open-mindedness, regardless of how nutty the fruitcakes therein may be. But, in the case of The Men Who Stare At Goats, there’s a lack of cohesion to the final product. I enjoyed this book, but I’m not sure what point Ronson is trying to make with it, other than there’s some freaky shit in our military’s history that rears up every now and again.

I made the mistake of watching the movie before reading the book, so I expected the usual setup of protagonist, antagonist, plot, conflict, etc. as they are presented in the film. The book is much looser, however, weaving in and out of the lives of multiple ex-soldiers and psychics and lunatics without ever finding a central theme or personality in which to be grounded. The resulting information is astounding and quite hard to believe, but never coalesces into what you can call a story. It comes off as interviews and set pieces and tales of strangeness that all float around each other, yet there’s nothing in the middle for these elements to orbit.

Do I believe the odd experiments of the First Earth Battalion were carried out as presented in the book? Sure. Why not. And I like how Ronson ties together fringe beliefs pulled from army research done in the seventies and eighties to the shameful and sickening treatment of Iraqi prisoners during the Second Iraq War. He mixes humor with horror, insanity with military reasoning, yet never undermines his skill as a reporter by growing glib or condescending.

Too bad things never gel. The book comes across as a series of vignettes, linked but not flowing, and by the time I finished The Men Who Stare At Goats, I was left wondering what exactly Ronson is trying to say. Still, it makes for a quick, funny, startling read, quite the alternative take on the supposed mindset of the American military.
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Jan 12, 2013 Christopher F. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is such a difficult topic to research that I'm not sure anyone can really write the book he wants to write on the subject, and what Ronson settles for is a highly impressionistic, meandering (i.e. organized around the narrative of his investigations and discoveries) but nonetheless trenchant and informative look at the sillier--which shades into scarier--side of secret intelligence work. Beginning with an investigation into experiments in lethal telekinesis by military intelligence (hence t...more This is such a difficult topic to research that I'm not sure anyone can really write the book he wants to write on the subject, and what Ronson settles for is a highly impressionistic, meandering (i.e. organized around the narrative of his investigations and discoveries) but nonetheless trenchant and informative look at the sillier--which shades into scarier--side of secret intelligence work. Beginning with an investigation into experiments in lethal telekinesis by military intelligence (hence the title), he also ranges into coverups of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the shameful death of Frank Olson (murdered by the C.I.A. in the 1950s for threatening to reveal secret torture programs), a fascinating intellectual history of military intelligence focusing on Jim Channon's "First Earth Batallion" school of thought (which he portrays as a failed attempt to enlighten the military with New Age ideas, which got subverted into ever more sinister torture and mind-control methods), and--and this is the part I knew the most about before going in--"remote viewing" programs. Ronson says, or implies, convincingly that wackos like Maj. Ed Dames (whom I have interviewed at length, during a period in the 1990s when I was researching this) masked a more secret group that was carrying out remote-viewing more seriously and perhaps even more successfully. Personally, I think Dames may have been a lightning rod--his purpose being to fill the public sphere with silly chatter and thus discredit the idea of remote viewing, so that people would associate it with unhinged pathological liars and laughable UFO folklore, in case the public or the media ever got wind of the more mundane or damning truth. (We know that military intelligence has used hapless or turncoat ufologists in this way in order to create noise around actual experimental aeronautics activity.) But Ronson seems to think that the higher-ups and those in the know were genuinely vexed and irritated by Dames's media blitz in the mid 1990s, during which time Art Bell made him a paranormal-subculture celebrity. (I must brag that I noticed Dames's entertainment potential by having on my radio show a few years before Bell did.)

On the whole, this book is not as systematic as Marks's "Search for the Real Manchurian Candidate" but riskier and ultimately more useful, while also not being as useless as unhinged braggadocio like Morehouse's "Psychic Warrior" and other first-person memoirs. I must commend Ronson for apparently having a rare capacity to get secretive people to open up. My hat is off to him on that front.

Haven't seen the George Clooney movie, but I can't imagine how they adapted it. Did they just have the goats part of it? That would be boring. Or did they just invent a whole storyline to go around the general topic? I will have to rent it and see.(less)

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Jan 06, 2013 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 04, 2012 Babak Fakhamzadeh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: current-affairs, memoires

Ronson is a good Gonzo journalist and in this book shows how he stumbled from one absurdity onto the next in search of, indeed, the men who stare at goats (and try to kill them by doing so). It would be hilarious if it weren't for real.
The men in question are US military secret ops, PsyOps, if you will, who, starting in the early 1980s tried out some radical stuff. They started with trying to stare de-bleated goats to death, remote sensing of general Noriega's where abouts and such but this lat...more

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Nov 21, 2012 Sara Barton rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Jon Ronson gives a very superficial report of efforts to introduce psychics into the US military in his 2004 book (reprinted in 2009), The Men Who Stare at Goats. Unfortunately, Ronson never bothers to do any serious research on the individuals claiming psychic powers or their connections to the antiwar movement. The end result is a book that is riddled with errors.

General Albert Stubblebine, as director of US Army INSCOM, conducted psychic research that supposedly proved the existence of psychi...more Jon Ronson gives a very superficial report of efforts to introduce psychics into the US military in his 2004 book (reprinted in 2009), The Men Who Stare at Goats. Unfortunately, Ronson never bothers to do any serious research on the individuals claiming psychic powers or their connections to the antiwar movement. The end result is a book that is riddled with errors.

General Albert Stubblebine, as director of US Army INSCOM, conducted psychic research that supposedly proved the existence of psychic powers. Unfortunately, the test subjects, test materials, and researchers were never required to adhere to scientific protocols. The reporting was done on an “I feel” basis, self-reporting events without physical evidence measured or recorded. (The hallmark of a psych warfare program is that a claim cannot be proven or disproven -- it is based on perception, not fact. Maybe that’s why the General ran smack dab into that all-too-real wall....)

Ronson cites one of the influences on psychic warrior Jim Channon as the Gentle Wind Project. Run by John Miller and Claudia Panuthos, now known as Mary “Moe” Miller, who met at the University of Connecticut as sociology students, the group purported to manufacture healing wands. (John Miller once operated a psychic school at Alpha Logics in Bristol, CT with John Warren White, the former education director at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in CA). The Attorney General’s office in Maine went after A Gentle Wind Project in 2006 and forced John Miller and his associates to pay hefty fines for fraudulent activities with Gentle Wind healing instruments. Miller now operates Family Systems Research Group, continuing to promote the healing instruments.

John Miller and Mary Miller reportedly claimed to create healing energy through sex with recruits, obviously using this as a ploy to get sex from the people they duped. (Mary Miller hasn’t changed much over the years -- she published “It’s All About Sex: What Drives Your Sexual Engine?” in 2010). This is a technique often used by intelligence professionals to gain control -- compromise your target and you can force compliance through blackmail and/or using cult control tactics to shape your target’s behavior.

I personally knew Miller and his circle of psychics (I was an uncooperative target, alas -- I asked too many questions, I wasn’t enticed by the gifts offered, and frankly, Miller wasn’t a likable man, especially when he kept popping up in my life like a bad penny). At the time, anyone dealing with hospitalized patients was likely to be shoved in that direction. There was a big push for consciousness studies conducted by professors like Dr. Ken Ring at University of Connecticut. Ring was well-known for his work with people who claimed near-death and UFO experiences. He treated the self-reported incidents as real for the experiencers, validating their mystic beliefs. Ronson makes no mention of any of this, and yet it is at the heart of what happened at Army INSCOM. Very often, the people with the cosmic “visions” most heavily promoted by Miller, Ring, et al. were psychologically dependent on their handlers in the psychic movement. Had Ronson really delved into the subject, he would have had access to all of that.

Colonel John Alexander, who was right-hand man to General Albert Stubblebine, Army INSCOM leader, was the non-lethal weapons expert responsible for the development of unconventional weapons. (Sticky Foam was first deployed in combat in Somalia in February 1995 by the U.S. Marines protecting a UN food distribution effort. It was a complete disaster, putting US Marines at risk in a hostile environment.) Col. Alexander was an active member of Ring’s group, IANDS, which the psychology professor operated out of his UCONN office back in the early days when I had contact with him in Storrs.

According to Ronson, Jim Channon once wrote in a confidential military paper to his superiors that “...The U.S. Army doesn’t really have any serious alternative than to be wonderful.” He saw the future of the U.S. Army as creating warriors who would carry with them into battle “...’ginseng regulators, diving tools, foodstuffs to enhance night vision, and a loudspeaker that would automatically emit ‘indigenous music and words of peace.’....Soldiers would learn to greet people with “sparkly eyes”’...”, as quoted by Ronson. (Readers are left to wonder if the sparkly eyes are the result of mystic stardust falling from the sky or maybe a dose of liquid ecstasy....Keep in mind that as the man in charge of the Non-Lethal Weapons program at Fort Meade, Col. Alexander had great access to incapacitating agents, many of which involved “feel good” drugs that produced euphoria in targets.)

The fact is that a number of the people involved with Colonel Alexander, John Miller, et al. were fervently intent on disrupting the US military, and one of their primary goals was to upset the apple cart. While in Kittery, Miller and his group often targeted military vets for their psychic readings. Among the group were other health care professionals -- therapists, social workers, nurses, and even a psychiatrist from Connecticut. They used their professional skills to turn people away from war, not to assist the US military.

Ronson is disingenuous when tossing out his information as valid and true. Much of what he cites is not factual in basis. There may be a good reason for this. Many of the people involved in efforts to turn Americans against the Vietnam War were determined to do it, come hell or high water. They were adept at utilizing phony psychics to exert psychological influence over selected targets. Had Ronson actually investigated the psychic research, he would have exposed the real winners in the game -- the anti-war folks who figured out how to out-psych the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. That’s really the story behind "The Men Who Stare at Goats" -- an intelligence game aimed at disarming the US military with faked cosmic forces. How else can you explain why the author failed to note the amazing coincidence that so many of Ronson’s subjects have ties to Connecticut? We just happen to have a high concentration of people who have extraordinary psychic talents?
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May 28, 2012 Zare rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

This one is a strange book. It starts rather funny - I mean is there something more weird than director of ultra secret military agency trying to run through a wall or taking bended metal fork in the meeting and saying to his commander "Do you want me to demonstrate how I did this?"? And then that same commander saying "That wold be inappropriate!" not because he means that it is truly inappropriate to bend forks during supper in expensive restaurant but because he takes his inspiration from the...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Keli rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult, humorous, paranormal, psychological, non-fiction, surreal

This book was so bizarre that I though he had to have made the whole thing up. Then there would be a reference to something that had made it to the news and I'd see the whole thing in an entirely different perspective. The suspension of disbelieve is less in the idea that these psychic occurrences were real, than that the people involved believed they were real. Given the historical context of the Earth First Battalion and the confusion in the war on terror and the bizarre stories that came out...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Patrick McCoy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

The Men Who Stare At Goats by Jon Ronson was another of Nick Hornby's suggestions from his excellent collection of columns on books he has bought and read, The Polysyllabic Spree. I saw it on sale at a book store not long ago and picked it up. It started out a little slow for me as it stated chronicling The First Earth battalion, which was created in order to get ideas form people thinking out of the box. This included outlandish experiments like trying to kill goats by staring at them to make t...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Mitch added it

Shelves: kill-yourself-first

This book worked hard to earn, decisively, its crop of zero stars.

It is about what supposedly happens when new age super-abilities (flying, invisibility, the power to stop a goat's heart by staring at it...) meet the oh-so-impressive military mind.

Since the military exists to destroy people and property, guess what they experiment with in attempts to gain these powers and apply them?

Alledgedly.

All kinds of names, dates, people and conversational bits are used to 'verify' the wildly gyrating con...more

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Aug 23, 2011 Christine Blachford rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I saw the film before I read the book, and took heed of those who said the book was nothing like the movie version. Whilst this is true, it also is very similar.

I feel as though when someone decided to make this into a film they realised that there were way too many characters in the book, and narrowed them down to make it easier to watch. There’s no story in the book, it is simply a navigation through research by Jon.

So, to the content itself. I love the stuff about goats and the walking throug...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

I bought this book simply because of the title and am so glad I did. It starts of quite benignly but then lurches into the very dark heart of the law of unintended consequences. On the surface it's about kooky american attempts to harness the occult and psychic powers for military aims but it gets darker once the lessons first applied by the so-called First Earth Battalion shift from harmless (unless you are a goat) to outright spooky. The chapter where Ronson interviews the writers of the Barne...more

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Jul 24, 2011 T. Edmund rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a 'mockumentry' claiming to expose the exploits of the American Government's attempts to ultilize psyhic phenomenon to further their war efforts.

The book is journalist/biography style with the author making contact with numerous military figures all somehow linked to 'psy-ops'. Rather than covering a coherent story format this book reads as a series of gags and irony ridden tales of the military's attempts to train their own X-men.

Ronson crafts a bizarre conspiracy,...more

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Jul 18, 2011 E. Lopez rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: humor

I can't believe I just discovered Jon Ronson. Even though the first line of the book is, "This is a true story," I kept thinking for the first third, "Nah, this can't be true."

The second part had me laughing hysterically -- the inmates are running the asylum, the inmates are running the asylum -- but the last part of the book, starting with the chapter on "The Dark Side," sobered me up pretty quickly.

Current torture methods used by the U.S. government apparently stem from a very twisted interp...more

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Jul 06, 2011 Jen Hirt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Last week, I listened to the audiobook of THE PSYCHOPATH TEST, which was my first exposure to Jon Ronson. Right after finishing it, I wanted to read another of his books, to sort of see how this investigative-humorist-detective-culture-critic makes it all work in print. So I picked up THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS, from 2004. The great thing about Ronson is how he must spend years tracking down these people, these documents, and yet when he writes it up, he's able to condense it and organize it int...more

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Jan 09, 2011 Penny Grubb rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ok, it's am amazing story on a lot of levels but I found the style a real irritation. Kept using that device of the narrator discovering something apparently momentous but keeping it from the reader. A master of the art can get away with that and rack up the tension, but this was just irritating (to me anyway) and in the realms of creative-writing-beginner's-error. We get things like - he whispered in my ear ... I said 'Oh my God!' ... end of chapter. No clue what it's about until ages later and...more

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Nov 27, 2010 Ensiform rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

The documentarian examines how the US military intelligence community has attempted to make use of paranormal and extra-sensory techniques and how this has impacted the war on terror today. Ronson shows how Jim Channon, a US Army colonel, who wrote the “First Earth Battalion” manual which attempted to reorganize the military along non-lethal, New Age ideals such as pacifying the enemy with indigenous music, positive energy, or discordant sounds. He interviews people such as Guy Savelli, martial...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Teresa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio

In this book, Jon Ronson examines the U.S. military� s forays into psychological, psychic, and paranormal warfare. Ronson talks with members of the military, scientists, and even a Guantanamo Bay detainee. Some of the interviews are hilariously absurd, as when he talks to Guy Savelli, a purported � goat dropper� who claims to have video evidence that he has killed a hamster with his mind. But then the book turns chilling. A faked UFO photo is shown to lead to the Heaven� s Gate suicides. And the...more

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Jan 30, 2010 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars

At first blush, The Men Who Stare at Goats looks as though it will be a book about a crazy bunch of army extremists who believe that they have the power to kill mammals with their minds. And, yes, this book is about that, but also about so much more . . .

Whatever your views happen to be about psychic powers, telekinesis, mind reading, and mind control, The Men Who Stare at Goats has something for you. The author begins by discussing the titular goat starers. However, he expands upon his point to...more

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Jan 05, 2010 Liz D rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a fascinating work of literary journalism. It begins with a relatively light-hearted premise: the cultivation of psychic powers for military applications. The subject matter becomes much darker as the book goes along, though, covering topics ranging from the Heaven's Gate mass suicide to the (sometimes curious) treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, from the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to the FBI siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX in 1993. Ron...more

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Jan 05, 2010 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I haven't seen the film based on "The Men Who Stare...", but I did see the BBC programme and I did attend a Ronson book-signing at the (now defunct) Borders in Oxford. It just took me a while to get round to actually reading it.

The title refers to some crazee cats in the U.S. military who tried to use paranormal techniques (some borrowed from the 1970s California new-age scene) to create 'super-soldiers' to fight in future conflicts. The original idea was to weave in almost a non-violent approac...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Bill O'driscoll rated it 4 of 5 stars

I knew Ronson's work from "Them: Adventures with Extremists" -- another journey into the heart of a bizarre subculture (multiples subcultures, in the former case). This one is a similarly funny, frightening, searching and poignant work, a look into the U.S. military's experiments in the paranormal over the years, but especially since the late 1970s. The driving irony is that the passion of one New Agey Vietnam veteran to make military operations less, well, violent, might have been twisted into...more

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Dec 31, 2009 Kathleen Hagen added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-audio-books, 2009-nonfiction

The Men Who Stare at Goats, by Jon Ronson, narrated by Sean Mangen, produced by Bolinda Audio, downloaded from audible.com.

Ronson, a British journalist and generally a satirist, became interested in stories he was hearing that the American military was trying to invoke supernatural powers to fight wars. It is very frightening because it is all true. He interviews many men in the military and out of it now, as well as agency people who used to be in the CIA. What the army is trying to accomplish,...more

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About Jon Ronson

Jon Ronson is a writer and documentary film maker. His books, Them: Adventures With Extremists and The Men Who Stare At Goats were international bestsellers. The Men Who Stare At Goats was adapted into a major motion picture starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges.

He's written the popular "Human Zoo" and "Out of the Ordinary" columns for The Guardian, where he still c...more

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Books by Jon Ronson

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Out of the Ordinary: True Tales from Everyday Craziness

The Amazing Adventures of Phoenix Jones: And the Less Amazing Adventures of Some Other Real-Life Superheroes

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“Most goat-related military activity is still highly classified.” — 6 people liked it

“The Americans have always been better than the Iraqis at the leaflets. Early on in the first Gulf War, Iraqi PsyOps dropped a batch of their own leaflets on US troops, designed to be psychologically devastating. They read, 'Your wives are back at home having sex with Bart Simpson and Burt Reynolds.” — 2 people liked it

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