The Men who Stare at Goats

Front Cover
Pan Macmillan, 2009 - History - 277 pages
"A jaw-dropper of a non-fiction story. It moves with wry, precise agility." The New York TimesIn 1979, a secret unit was established by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known 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.They were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting George Bush's War on Terror. Often funny, sometimes chilling and always thought-provoking, journalist Jon Ronson's Sunday Times bestseller The Men Who Stare at Goats is a story so unbelievable it has to be true.PRAISE FOR THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS"Not only a narcotic road trip through the wackier reaches of Bush's war effort, but also an unmissable account of the insanity that has lately been done in our names" Observer"Funny and gravely serious, what emerges is a world shrouded in secrecy, mystery and wackiness, where Warrior Monks and psychic spies battle it out for military thinking. Mind-blowing stuff" Metro"Few more earnest investigative journalists would have had the brilliant bloody-mindedness to get what he has got and hardly any would have the wit to present it with as much clarity." The Observer"Simultaneously frightening and hilarious." The Times"A hilarious and unsettling book." The Boston Globe

Other editions - View all

About the author (2009)

Jon Ronson is a writer and documentary film maker. His books include Them: Adventures with Extremists, Out of the Ordinary: True Tales of Everyday Craziness, What I Do: More True Tales, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, and So You've Been Publicly Shamed. The Men Who Stare at Goats was made into a motion picture starring George Clooney in 2009. He will be delivering the opening address at the Brisbane Writers Festival in September 2015.

Bibliographic information