the best non-fiction I have ever read ( )

This book was very interesting and funny. The author seemed to loose his way half way through but it was still good. ( )

This book goes back and forth from hilarious to horrifying more often than Rosemary's Baby. Except that it's all true. This really touches on so many of my main interests, I don't even know where to begin. Basically, all the weird shit that just seems like fiction in a Pynchon novel turns out to be based in reality and this book does a better job of digging it all up, while being more well-researched, well-written and less sensational than any book about the US military's psychic engagements ever could be. Suffice it to say, I definitely want to re-watch the film. ( )

This book goes back and forth from hilarious to horrifying more often than Rosemary's Baby. Except that it's all true. This really touches on so many of my main interests, I don't even know where to begin. Basically, all the weird shit that just seems like fiction in a Pynchon novel turns out to be based in reality and this book does a better job of digging it all up, while being more well-researched, well-written and less sensational than any book about the US military's psychic engagements ever could be. Suffice it to say, I definitely want to re-watch the film. ( )

Ron Johnson is a talented and entertaining journalist, and a great reader for the audio versions of his book. The story is intriguing following the bizarre path of nonlethal weapons in warfare and use of “weird science” to affect the minds of fighters and prisoners alike. Science and pseudoscience intermingle, and find ways to survive in the massive machinwa of defense spending. Pseudoscience and science are presumed applied to real world situations with unisual ethical dilemmas.

The problem is that Ron makes this all a bit too fun and entertaining while neither thinking through what a reasonable alternative route might have been for the army nor whether the suggested actions that occurred were outside the ethical framework we accept. He could take his story a bit more seriously and leave us with a bit more insight. ( )