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Loading... War Nerd (edition 2008)by Gary Brecher
Work InformationWar Nerd by Gary Brecher
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Nine times out of ten, when somebody is gleefully described as being "politically incorrect", you can safely assume that person is just an asshole and move right along. The War Nerd (a fat suburban data entry clerk who might actually be the pen name of eXile literary critic John Dolan) is one of the rare exceptions to this rule, whose unfailingly misanthropic and contrarian yet well-educated and insightful perspectives on war and society manages to be both offensive (if you had any mistaken ideas about some imagined superiority of American military acumen) and funny at the same time. His articles are difficult to categorize; they're a mix of unabashed love of warfare, scathing denunciations of inept politicians and generals, sober analyses of military news, and a genuine respect for warriors of all times and places that's almost unique. Reading his book, which unfortunately includes many repeats of his old eXile articles, I was made very aware of the strange gap between the unceasingly bland and safe American heartland where I live and mankind's seemingly limitless capacity for destruction and conflict. It's hard to describe, but you'll never read some bland AP article about Iraq War casualties or "tensions" between countries X and Y again without thinking of how truly odd it is to live in an air-conditioned consumer utopia while millions of people still fight and die all over the world. Better yet, you will actually think it's funny! ( ) no reviews | add a review
Self-described war nerd Gary Brecher knows he's not alone, that there's a legion of fat, lonely Americans, stuck in stupid, paper-pushing desk jobs, who get off on reading about war because they hate their lives. But Brecher writes about war, too.War Nerd collects his most opinionated, enraging, enlightening, and entertaining pieces. Part war commentator, part angry humorist àla Bill Hicks, Brecher inveighs against pieties of all stripes -- Liberian generals, Dick Cheney, U.N. peacekeepers, the neo-cons -- and the massive incompetence of military powers. A provocative free thinker, he finds much to admire in the most unlikely places, and not always for the most pacifistic reasons: the Tamil Tigers, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Danes of 1,000 years ago, and so on, across the globe and through the centuries. Crude, scatological, un-P.C., yet deeply informed, Brecher provides a radically different, completely unvarnished perspective on the nature of warfare. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)303.66Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Social Processes Conflict and conflict resolution ; Violence War and peaceLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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