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Also by Jon Ronson:

So You've Been Publicly Shamed, April 2015
Hardcover / e-Book
Lost At Sea, November 2012
Hardcover / e-Book
The Psychopath Test, May 2011
Hardcover
The Men Who Stare at Goats, April 2006
Trade Size (reprint)
Them, January 2003
Trade Size (reprint)

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS
By: Jon Ronson

The US Government spends over $400 billion in military expenditures. Real-life secret US Army experiments conducted at tax-payers' expense revealed in THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.

Simon and Schuster
April 2006
272 pages
ISBN: 0743270606
Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction Political | Non-Fiction

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 adversaries, they were the First Earth Battalion. And they really weren't joking. What's more, they're back and fighting the War on Terror.

With firsthand access to the leading players in the story, Ronson traces the evolution of these bizarre activities over the past three decades and shows how they are alive today within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in postwar Iraq. Why are they blasting Iraqi prisoners of war with the theme tune to Barney the Purple Dinosaur? Why have 100 debleated goats been secretly placed inside the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina? How was the U.S. military associated with the mysterious mass suicide of a strange cult from San Diego? The Men Who Stare at Goats answers these and many more questions.

Media Buzz

This American Life - September 29, 2007
This American Life - September 22, 2007
This American Life - June 24, 2006