American Nerd: The Story of My People (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: deadly alliance, nerd events, benjamin nugent, New York, Sherry Turkle, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his charming and disarmingly serious study of the history of the nerd in popular culture and throughout modern history, Nugent (Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing) succeeds in crafting a nuanced discussion without resorting to smugness or excessive cleverness. His prose is straightforward, but the writing is never dry, as Nugent maintains a brisk pace by chasing an entertaining series of tangents across short chapters. Discrete pockets of nerd-dom are carefully observed and analyzed, with an eye for connections that lead to unusual places. While there are engaging sections about more obvious nerd subjects like the rise of online gaming and the history of American science-fiction clubs, Nugent takes his book in surprising directions, such as the ethnic implications of the nerd categorization, particularly in regard to Jewish and Asian stereotypes. In one chapter, Nugent finds correspondence between nerdiness and people with Asperger's syndrome, astutely drawing comparisons between the socializing problems experienced by both groups and positing that many of those considered nerds historically might in fact be on the autism spectrum. Another unexpected detour, this one into the intense subculture of high school and college debaters, turns into an extraordinarily poignant meditation on the friendships engendered by shared passions. Swinging ably from personal anecdotes to historical perspective, Nugent's exploration of outcasts is a triumph. (May)
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From The Washington Post

When I was assigned this review, the editor wrote me a note: "I hope you don't take offense at this, but your name sprang to mind as a reviewer for a book on nerds."

I probably qualify as a nerd because, among other things, I wrote a book about reading the encyclopedia -- an activity that's up there on the dorkiness scale with speaking Elvish over ham radio.

But take offense? Not at all.

Perhaps in high schools where quarterbacks still sit atop the social hierarchy, the word "nerd" continues to damage egos. But in adulthood, it's lost much of its sting. In fact, we live in a golden age of nerd-dom. As David Brooks pointed out in the New York Times last month, self-confident nerds are taking over culture: the Google founders, even Barack Obama, who can be seen as the nerdy alternative to President Bush's swaggering jock.

And now, as with any movement, the geek crowd has gotten its own cultural history, in Benjamin Nugent's entertaining and intelligent American Nerd. Nugent begins with his definition of the nerd. Nerds, he writes, are people who remind others of machines. They aren't quite robots, but they aren't quite human either. They are passionate about a technical topic, they speak in formal English, they favor logic over emotion, and they avoid confrontation.

The word "nerd" was coined by Dr. Seuss in his 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo, in which he wrote "I'll sail to Ka-Troo, and bring back an IT-KUTCH, a PREEP, and a PROO, a NERKLE, a NERD, and a SEERSUCKER, too!" The word seeped into the culture, first popping up on college campuses, then via TV shows such as "Happy Days" and "Saturday Night Live." But the nerd archetype has been around since at least the 19th century, long before any human uttered the N-word. The roots, says Nugent, can be traced to the rise of industrialism and the "romantic reaction against science/machinery." Culture began to embrace a "perceived split between sensuality and reason." Smart and sexy drifted apart.

The nerd-bashing, Nugent argues, was later fueled by such developments as the rise of physical education, immigration and "Muscular Christianity." The era of Teddy Roosevelt, college football, robust health and outdoorsiness had little tolerance for effete bookworms.

The most fascinating parts of the book are those that deal with the interplay between nerdiness and ethnicity. Nugent argues that racism comes in two forms: stereotyping an ethnicity as too animalistic and sensual (for instance, Africans) or portraying them as sexless and machine-like (such as Jews and Asians). Nerdism, in other words. "If a propaganda artist of the Third Reich had time-traveled to 1984 and watched Revenge of the Nerds, he might have interpreted the hero, Louis Skolnick, as a traditional age-old caricature of a Jew, and Ogre and his band of overwhelmingly blond-haired and blue-eyed jocks as the image of ideal Aryans."

Likewise, Asians were portrayed in minstrel shows as "John Chinaman," who was always losing his girlfriends to white men. John Chinaman survived nearly intact in Long Duk Dong from the 1984 teen movie "Sixteen Candles," frightening and repelling Molly Ringwald by calling her "hot stuff."

Nugent says that nerds shy away from confrontation, which may be why I have nothing vitriolic to say about the book. But I do have two gripes: First, Nugent talks a lot about how nerds employ formal, rule-based speech. But to me, the real trademark of nerd speech is their obsession with breaking those rules, with exploiting the ambiguities in language. Nerds are obsessed with puns. I once went to a Mensa convention (research for a book, I swear), and the amount of wordplay was astonishing. An architect was said to have an "edifice complex." The eating of frogs' legs makes the frogs "hopping mad."

Second, and more substantially, I take issue with Nugent's dismissal of hipster nerds as just a bunch of posers who have co-opted nerdiness for their own sake. Many of these adult nerds are not faking it. They grew up receiving wedgies from the popular kids and obsessing over Philip K. Dick novels. Now, the information economy has made their peculiar skill set and obsessions valuable.

May the force be with the neo-Nerds, I say.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1ST edition (May 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743288017
• ISBN-13: 978-0743288019
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #447,227 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Baffling. One of us ... but not, July 16, 2008

By	Cynthia Ewer "Housewife Webmaster" (Richland, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm a 53-year-old grandmother with impeccable Nerd credentials, and I looked forward to this book.

Having finished it, I'm baffled.

Why, when the subdeck proclaims "The Story of My People", does the author spend the final chapter making it ULTRA-clear that he hasn't numbered among us since the age of 14? At that time, he asserts, he became "cool".

Okay, I get it. Coming out as a nerd could be hazardous to your self-esteem, career prospects and continued marketability as a media hipster ... but I really resented the last-chapter renunciation.

Turning to the book, it's an enjoyable read, if a bit constrained by the writer's place in time. Oh, yes, he covers D&D ... but what about the 60's precursors, wargames? The treatment of the place of science fiction is truncated to 80's-kid sensibility; the author obviously missed those of us baby boomers who came to self-awareness as 60's-era library kids, scarfing up Asimov and Heinlein's YA titles (over the strenuous objections of school librarians, teachers and parents).

Bottom line: the book is interesting but too restricted to one writer's sensibility. Reach a bit, and you may touch the core of nerdness, but not in the limited cultural icons this author parades.

Are you a nerd? I am. And as an author, I don't have any puerile need to distance myself from the title.

Too bad this writer can't OWN the "people" he claims to document.

Is "hip" really worth your soul, honey?

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not quite what I expected, June 21, 2008

By	Hilary - See all my reviews

The title was extremely intriguing, I'll admit. A treatise on the nerd? Can't say I've seen it done before, but I haven't really searched for such a thing, either.

His bias as a childhood nerd clearly affects his writing, but I didn't find said bias to be intolerable, either. Just be aware that it is very much evident in the first part of the book.

Nugent nicely outlines the history of the nerd and gives a comprehensive definition of what he considers a nerd (very loosely, a person strongly attracted to the rational and the definitive) and why society-at-large shuns nerds.

My favorite part of the book was the section entitled "The cool nerd: superficial reflections on the hipster." (His coverage of this is somewhat amusing, given that the hipster adoption of nerdiness provides the book's marketed audience, imo.)

I was rather dissatisfied that he never addressed the difference between the geek and the nerd--he even discusses the show Freaks and Geeks, but never the difference (is there a difference?) between terms such as "geek," "dork," and "nerd."

My primary issues with the book are with its structure and the lack of certain content. I found that the book seemed to jump from subject to subject, with only a loose connection occurring from chapter to chapter. I suspect I would've enjoyed it much more had I read only a chapter at a time. Secondly, for a book that purports to be "the story of my people," he largely neglects the female nerd.

I really wanted to like the book, but I found it too dis-connected and personal. It's not at all poorly written, but it just wasn't to my taste.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Many Surprises, May 15, 2008

By	Grace Kornfield - See all my reviews

Nugent weaves analysis of history, literature, and sociology with reporting, and personal experience to create a multidimensional perspective on what it means in to be a nerd in this culture. He looks at stereotypes, cultural assumptions and their impact on people who tend to be better at activities that don't demand mastery of subtle social interaction and nuance. He reports on a variety of group activities enjoyed by this population and explores some of the psychological benefits of belonging to such groups. As he ponders some of the effects of anti-nerd sentiment and reflects on himself and his childhood friends, he provides an analysis that is poignant, funny, thought provoking, and compassionate. I laughed and cried as I moved through it. I recommend this book to anyone seeking a more complex understanding of a far reaching and often shallow social construction.