THEM

No, this post isn't about the 1954 giant ant movie, it's about Jon Ronson's book THEM: Adventures with Extremists. I'd been thinking about checking out Ronson's book for a while. He's a frequent contributor on NPR's This American Life, and his dry sense of humor appealed to me.

The cover of the book gives a perfectly adequate summary of what this book is about:

"Is there really, as the extremists claim, a secret room from which a tiny elite secretly rule the world? And if so, can it be found? This book is a journey into the heart of darkness, involving PR-savvy Ku Klux Klansmen, the story of Ruby Ridge, a harem of kidnapped sex slaves, and Nicolae Ceausescu's shoes. While Jon Ronson attempts to locate the secret room he is chases by men in dark glasses, unmasked as a Jew in the middle of a Jihad training camp, and witnesses CEOs and leading politicians--like Dick Cheney--undertake a bizarre owl ritual in the forests of northern California."

If that doesn't grab your attention, what will? There are several remarkable aspects of this book. One, Ronson meets with these extremists who are almost universally loathed, and he manages to tell their story without judging them. This is journalism that's just hard to find these days. Ronson gains access, he observes, and he reports. And he finds humor in each of these situations, albeit dark humor for the most part. At times, Ronson may seem almost too sympathetic with some of his subjects, particularly with the Klansman he follows for weeks, but in the end, the people he follows tend to sink themselves.

It should be noted that this book would not have succeeded as well as it has if Ronson himself was not Jewish. Most of the people with whom he interacts believe not only that the world is run by a small, secret group of individuals, but that those individuals are Jewish. The tension this situation creates, especially in the Jihad camp and when Ronson visits Aryan Nations, is palpable. Some of the visits Ronson pays may come off as stunts, but they still make for good stories. I found the interviews with the survivors of Ruby Ridge particularly enlightening.

The major weakness of the book probably lies in the chapter referring to Ceausescu's shoes. It's an interesting anecdote, but it has nothing to do (as far as I could tell) with the rest of the books themes. And does Ronson actually ever find the secret rulers of the world? Well...sort of. The answer is somewhat anticlimactic, but I still found it satisfying.

So I'm sorry if this review is a bit jarbled. I'm a bit sick at the moment, and I read so little non-fiction that I'm barely sure how to even approach it. It should suffice to say that this was an excellent read (and it would be a quick one, for people without one-year-olds). I highly recommend it.