War Nerd

War Nerd
by Gary Brecher

War Nerd
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Book Summary Information

Author: Gary Brecher
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-01
ISBN: 0979663687
Number of pages: 328
Publisher: Soft Skull Press

Book Reviews of War Nerd

Book Review: The Third World repackaged for all us cubicle clones
Summary: 4 Stars

Don't be deceived by the toilet humour, crudity and sweeping generalisations: this is a highly entertaining book with Brecher's observations on everything from the fashion choices of West African warlords to the conflict resolution style of Pakistani taxi drivers far more amusing than any serious comedy.

Certainly, this is just a collection of essays already available on the internet but besides the benefit of being printed in book form, this also gives the author and editor the opportunity to concentrate on what they judge the most important and worthwhile of Brecher's writings.

I found this book valuable for the following reasons:

Brecher's several page summaries of the bigger and more interesting Third World wars of the past few decades which generally receive so little attention in the West, despite containing some surprising omissions (for example writing dozens of pages on ethnic conflict in South East Asia without mentioning the overwhelming Chinese economic dominance in many of these countries), provide a superficial sketch of these conflicts for minimal reader effort (but don't expect rigorous references or justification).

Brecher's analysis of the nature of warfare itself and how it's changed since the end of the Cold War is very interesting: how Western military doctrines have not always yet caught up, particularly in regard to Iraq, Afghanistan and how the USA is potentially wasting much of its vast defence budget.

Brecher's understanding of the nature of typical ethnic relations (conflict rather than harmony) is essentially common sense to anyone with the capability of independent thought who pays attention to current affairs but apparently not yet recognised by the political class who runs Western societies or the media class who back them.

If you're interested in the rest of the world outside of the West, if you're interested in military conflict, this book is a worthwhile read.

Summary of War Nerd

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 ?la 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.

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