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War Nerd | 
 enlarge | Author: Gary Brecher
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Category: Book
List Price: £8.12
Buy New: £7.25
You Save: £0.87 (11%)
New (1) Used (5) from £5.98
Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 29568
Format: Import
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 328
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0979663687
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.66
EAN: 9780979663680
ASIN: 0979663687
Publication Date: April 15, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
Hilarious, insightful, challenging June 6, 2008
I had not heard of the War Nerd until a couple of months ago when I came across a chance link to his fortnightly column at exile.ru. The War Nerd (Gary Brecher) is a self-confessed old fashioned American nationalist, probably around 30, fat, works in IT, and spends all his free time reading up on war. If this sounds just about the most unnatractive CV you can think of, you couldn't be more wrong.
There isn't a better book out there at the moment that will teach you about the nature of war in such an enjoyable, accessable and entertaining manner. The War Nerd is not a 'hardware freak' - i.e. the sorts of peoplw who believe that the best equipment and technology wins wars, i.e. most Americans. He comes at warfare from a completely different point of view, that almost all wars are tribal, and if we understand this, we can understand why supposedly better equipped armies lose out to peasants armed with rocks and a few light weapons. He claims he finds conventional warfare 'boring'. And he has a track record of predictions to back up his claims of insight; that the American 'surge' strategy would fail in Iraq; that Hezbollah would win the conflict with Isreal in Lebanon. And most if it comes back to that insight - see war as tribal. Throughout his essays he always states how much he 'loves' war, that working in IT in Fresno (where he lives) is a death sentance. But there is a strong line of humanitarian concern in his work, hidden slightly from view. Often the punchline to military operational disasters is the civilian casualty count. Politically he comes across very free-thinking, much like other maverick American writers like Hunter S Thompson.
He writes on a range of military issues, from history through to equipment and small modern conflicts. Some of his essays are laugh-out loud funny, some are devestatingly insightful. One that struck me was his essay on 'Why I hate WW2'. In it he states that WW2 was bad for America because ever since they have believed that they are the good guys fighting the bad guys, without ever seeing the shades of grey between. His essays on equipment such as the F18 hornet right the way down to the humble AK47 are again equally insightful - it would take years of trawling the net to find insight into these matters - the War Nerd distils that for you, and makes it highly entertaining.
But it's the laughs that bring me back to read him time after time. His ascerbic, scatalogical, ruthless sense of humour turns what would otherwise be a dullards guide to modern war into something not only entertaining but possibly important.
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