A forum for the authors' self-aggrandizement
593092
Expensive and full of fluff.  The authors simply love citing their own work.  They do so at LEAST twice per chapter.  All the cases in the book were written by the authors and the cases themselves are riddled with meaningless buzzwords and are just downright lame (e.g. "a lights-out data center").  Small wonder why the non-English speaking reviewer had problems.  Poor guy.

It's obvious that the only opinions the authors value is their own.  Beware of any class that requires this textbook because it means the professor has no idea what they are talking about.  Just because you teach at Harvard does not necessarily mean you are smart or intelligent.
2973339
Having attended the author's book discussion, let me first address the other reviews which complain about marketing! The author herself admitted that the title was somewhat misleading, but that it was her publisher's choice to market the book in this way. Sometimes, a writer has no choice in these matters.  That said, most of the stories do address dealing with the naziism of other parents, as well as "maternal combustion."

I'll agree that it's not the best collection ever, by far, but there are several stories worth the read; funny, frustrating, sad, etc. If you do not feel compelled to purchase the book, at least borrow it from the library.  You'll decide which stories hit you, and which do not.
1957451
This book is a somewhat weighty academic tome about the well known phenomenon of incivility on social media. It is worth a read for those woij more than a passing interest in trolls and similar people.
152264
I thoroughly enjoyed this new book by a true insider.  Baby-Boomers can't  help but love it.  But what really strikes me as odd is this cadre of objectors who have taken up what must HAVE to be full-time jobs of policing the reviews, then negatively commenting in every single reply.  Is it just ME, or does anyone else find this excessive and obsessive?  It just makes me wonder what the REAL issue is here, and why they should find this book so utterly threatening to them.  I can only assume that they honestly believe their negativity is somehow paying off for them in some way.  But in what way?  Be that as it may...I smell a rat here, and wonder what their hidden agenda really is.

I want to urge those attracted to this book to take the chance, get it, and decide for yourself.  You'll indeed be pleasantly surprised.  Then maybe you'll be able to explain to me what the big deal is with all the full-time nay-sayers.  Enough already.
4887882
I hope you don't publish what I am going to say, since I have a conflcit of interest here. I was the Chief Editor of this book. It would be unethical for me to promote my own work, especially anonymously.
4425575
You want to post a bully review; you reap what you sow.  Why waste talent by disparaging another author not on content but based on another authors success.  I am not sure what your intent was in writing this review, but I'm thinking it backfired.
3889110
The author of the book should be arrested for intellectual dishonesty. I don't understand why amazon is allowing the authors to publish such usuless material.
760958
Unlike the so-called book reviews before my post, I actually did read the book.  Ann defines how vicious and vindictive the left really are.  She points a finger at who the real hate mongers are.  Interestingly, they don't even attempt to challenge her ideas by taking a different approach to reviewing her book.  You only need to read the negative reviews, barely a half step forward before what she says in the pages of her book become blazingly self evident.  The book is filled with quotes from seemingly objective news sources about the hate that liberal's have for conservatives.  All lies?  No less than 35 pages are dedicated to documenting the sources of all the liberal lies about conservatives propagated by the liberal mainstream media.  Following her well-documented footnotes quickly vanquishes any argument of "he said", "she said".
  The compilation of liberal vindictiveness and sources together in one place alone is a gold mine to take to task your local liberal at any fireside debate.  She exposes the liberal argument's tactics, not to challenge the ideas of a conservative, but to simply attack the conservative.  By page 30 you get a documented idea of who does most of the real "hating" in American political circles.  A poster writes that she is "UN American".  I graciously beg to differ.  In just six posts, her patriotism and intelligence have already been questioned.  The point of the book is quickly proven.
  I find it interesting that even with the detail at which she documents her sources, liberals will still call it lies while the rambling of some liberal writer without a single shred of documented evidence will be ordained as divine truth.
908297
The author asks a question that it is illegal to answer in Australia.
She claims to be an Aboriginal, and uses that claim to get government money, while real Aboriginals in the outback suffer.

She is a race baiter of the Al Sharpton camp.

And here is a question:  Why buy a book whose title question is not ony illegal to answer in the country of origin, but whose author went to court to prevent anyone from answering?

I hope the publishing company loses it shirt on this moral cretin.
4599782
This book is appalling. The authors' stated goal is to provide you with words (specifically verbs) that will engage and call your audience to action. It misses this goal by a wide margin. Almost on every page the authors demonstrate the gaping chasm between their goal and their competence to both follow through on execution and their understanding of the subject of communication. Raise your hand if "abreact" or "absquatulate" stirs the fire of your passion to do anything other than to look-up the definition - bear in mind we are only at words that begin with "ab". The book that has far fewer definitions than a typical dictionary and some verbs, such as "acculturate", warrant appearing twice; because they are so "powerful" in the authors' opinion one presumes. Some word are not even verbs, for example the supposed power verb "oil spot" has an example use as a noun: "Rhonda was a big fan, but to the band, she was just an oil spot they could leave at dinner."

The authors' promise, in the initial pages, is to provide a dictionary of particularly evocative and stirring verbs with example usage in "power" contexts, but the authors quickly tire of this pretext and end up offering definitions that are either very short (sometimes 2 word), for example - "Amerce: punish; fine"; or redundant, for example - "Invocate: speak at an invocation." Aside from this laziness the word choices are dreadful. Who would consider awfulize and attitudinize "power" verbs?

This book is a shameful waste of trees that the FT-Press should have been ashamed to publish and the authors should have realized would damage any professional credibility they had.
4804880
This book is certain to raise the ire of the credentialed and tenured many who have happily adopted  shape-shifting, post-modernist self-rationalization, as a basis on which to view world events and rationalize their own moral choices, secure in the knowledge that they are following in the footsteps of the "greats."  For the author, the road less traveled ... and a detour very early on in the journey.

Herein is a rare, humor-filled, insider's insight into philosophy department indoctrination techniques of "smoking your own dope," abandonment of critical thinking, and the crushing of dissent.  If you have ever wondered what it would have been like to study philosophy in school in the modern ages, look no further, and warn your college-age children.  The author's common-sense, irreverent take on the rock-star like cult status of philosophical figures  (Hume, Kant, et. al.), and the damage that their groupie-like heirs have wrought, provides  a unique insight from a camp dissenter.

The interested would do well to view with skepticism the posted long-winded and ostensibly "positive" review, a classic example of "damning with faint praise," an oft-seen reviewer technique for discouraging potential readers from considering books with opposing philosophical views.  The criticisms are not reflective of the actual content nor reflect the author's careful argumentation - most are out of context or off-topic -- smacking of a professor chastising a contrarian student, and seem almost a parody of the professorial archetypes so wickedly described in the book.  The reviewer can't even resist getting off an irrelevant, vulgar, cheap shot at current political events.  The author has clearly hit close to home, to drive the reviewer into such a frenzied long-winded recitation of "begats" and self-display, as if the mere recitation of any of the "popular" names in philosophy imbues either the speaker or the subjects themselves with gnostic infallibility.

There are terms in the book that require context and background, and a reference glossary for non-philosophy types would be useful, but given the subject matter, this is a strikingly jargonesque-free foray into the rarefied area of those considering themselves on the vanguard of epistemology.  The author bravely dissects the logical fallacies generated from erroneous first principles of the anti-realists in clear, concise, non-obfuscating language, often in the form of a lively debate between a tenured philosophy professor and a "nave" student (i.e., one who hasn't yet drunk the koolaid).

For non-philosophy buffs, such as myself, the author raises a veil to expose how some modern philosophers use of a layman's understanding of science (current favorites seem to be decades-old snapshots of quantum mechanics and ocular imaging) to prop up pet theories and overwhelm their generally non-scientific target audience, to suit their pet point of view.

Fascinating for both the content, and for the reaction that it inspires.  A great addition to the library for those interested in the origins of many of today's fashionable, yet sinister, political and social philosophies.
4608687
After ordering this book and reading it, I decided to look the author up and verify his credentials.  Seems there is a good deal of controversy about this guy.  The reader may want to take his written words with a grain of salt.
195821
Andersen Prunty is a friend of mine. I guess more of a "colleague" if you want to get pretentious considering we are both involved in the bizarro fiction scene and only see each other once a year (although we speak on the phone once or twice a month, maybe.) Andy, as he is known by people who speak on the phone with him once or twice a month, sent me this book for free, likely because he is familiar with my status as a dirt poor graduate student. So I was talking on the phone with him tonight and asked him if he wanted me to write a review, considering receiving free books makes me feel obligated to reciprocate with a review. And he said, "Ok."

I would like to add here that I strongly dislike writing reviews. I find them difficult to do well and they usually take me longer to write than ANYTHING else, so I recently vowed to never write a review again. But I asked Andy if he was ok with a review that I put absolutely no effort into, and he was, so here is a review that I am putting no effort into. Perhaps what I write below this will be helpful to the potential reader. Perhaps it will not.

Anyway, I see a lot of reviews of bizarro books by bizarro authors, and I think a potential buyer may think they lack some degree of validity, and this may be the case. But they would be less necessary if more readers were writing more reviews (the small press needs your help!).

So as a preface, I think I'm more critical of bizarro books than most of the authors who are involved in the scene (although I usually keep my mouth shut in public forums). This makes me feel like a jerk sometimes.

So let's get to My Fake War, but not just yet. First I want to mention Andy's other books: I love love love love his novella, Zerostrata. His others are decent, but do not excite me like Zerostrata.

I have also published a few of his stories in my literary journal, and one of them excited me, but not nearly on the same level as Zerostrata.

Ok, so it's time to talk about My Fake War. I usually do not like "war books." There is something about them that turns me off. I do not know what this is. But the first half of My Fake War excited me. Probably because it is a fake war book rather than a war book. The first half excited me as much as my Zerostrata reading experience.  Silently in my head, I was screaming, "Andy Prunty is back! He is back!" And considering the protagonist is alone with no one to talk to throughout much of this section, this is quite an achievement.  It is difficult to engage the reader with a protagonist  who is mostly spending his time alone.

But then the second half comes along, and my excitement dwindled. It was too action-y for me. Like zombies, I think action is better translated in the medium of film. It usually gets boring for me, although there are the occasional exceptions, often dealing with zaniness and unreality. There was a little of this, but not enough.

So if you like action in your lit, this is a freakin' awesome book. Buy it if you're looking for a good introduction to Andy. If you're more like me, get Zerostrata, which is a surreal/absurd romance that will, pardon my clich, blow your mind.
1985038
I ordered this book after reading the author's NYT piece on her own Adderall addiction.  I was surprised to see that this book is mostly about the author and her self-aggrandizing view of her own intellectual pursuits.  Her next book also appears to focus on herself.  Is this what we have to look forward to in nonfiction by millennial authors?
4716517
I found this book interesting, but annoying.  One example of poor reasoning is this: the authors repeatedly bash orthodoxy, and accepted canon, then turn around and quote scripture like "gospel" to make  their case.  You can't have it both ways, gentlemen--make your case one way  or the other, or clarify how some scripture is fact and some isn't.
4504491
I am shocked by the vial hate-speech and mindless ad hominem attacks in the "reviews" printed below. They demonstrate just the kind of vicious closed-minded nonsense that ID proponents seek to dispel. To quote one extreme example (you can read it in context in John Kwok's "review" below): "I find the notion of a Festschrift published in honor of Professor Johnson as absurd as a group of Neo-Nazis publishing one to commemorate Adolf Hitler and his hate-filled book "Mein Kampf" (I find this an apt comparison since Johnson and quite a few of his supporters have an ideological world view that is remarkably close to the likes of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.)."

Well, to quote Adolf Hitler, whom this reviewer seems to have some familiarity with, "All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be." Several of these reviews marvelously illustrate this principle and shame on them for that. And good on the authors of Darwin's Nemesis, both advocates and opponents of ID, who seek a more reasoned approach.

As far as this book is concerned, it must have hit a raw nerve. One has to wonder what irrational opponents of Johnson and his thinking are so sensitive about. If Darwinism really does all that it claims, then it will survive if it is the fittest theory; if not, extinction is inevitable. Whatever happens, there is no place in a civilized society for the kind of hate-speech that a few reviewers clearly wish to substitute for rational arguments. Most appear to do this because they have not actually read the book, but simply hate Phillip Johnson. Buy the book, read it and make up your own mind. The irrational hatred of others is not a good basis for making any judgments in life.

(By way of full disclosure, I authored one of the chapters in Darwin's Nemesis. No, it is not a glowing tribute in support of ID. Yes, I do think that Phillip Johnson and those who disagree with him have a right to make their arguments in a way that allows others to rationally evaluate them. No, just in case there is any confusion about this, I don't support a world-view that in any way resembles that of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.)
1832083
Any reviews accusing this author of bashing religion are unfounded.  What this author does criticize is the dangerous behavior of fanatics who choose willful ignorance and blind allegiance to dangerous ideas.  The fact that other reviewers try to promote anti-science charlatans or defend cults that hide under the cover of religion actually proves his point - people who believe these non-sensical ideas are manipulative and will stop at nothing to defend their warped sense of reality.  If anything, my only criticism of the author is that he tries too hard to defend more mainstream religions by mentioning the Catholic hospital and educational systems, and the benefits of spiritual life for people that find comfort in faith.  Religion already has plenty of defenders.

As to the claims that this book is poorly sourced because it references a list of cult-like organizations previously identified, some of whom are not still in operation?  That is a ridiculous attempt to find any way to discredit this otherwise damning examination of the problems of uncritical adherence to naive and dogmatic world views.  I understand that people would rather attack the author than acknowledge that what he is saying is true, but the attacks are baseless.

One point that the author makes that I found particularly interesting:  cults demand purity.  I see this as evidenced by the anti-science extremists on both ends of the political spectrum.  For the religious right, "purity" means obsession with sexual purity of women and purity of thought (ignorance / obedience to authority).  For the liberal left, "purity" means obsession with naturalness, even if that means fear of evidence-based medicine and scientific advancement.