Customer Reviews

American Nerd: The Story of My People

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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?

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.

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.

"American Nerd" may be a red herring, but at least the author is up front about not being a nerd. We learn in the introduction that he renounced his geekhood in early adolescence. Being uncool is death in the journalism business, he explains. And he knows how to promote. He's riding the geek-chic wave before we move on to the next "in" group of "out" people; misunderstood artists, amateur chicken farmers, whatever will sell.

Particularly sad is the author's admission that he abandoned his two best friends in adolescence. The reason? They weren't popular enough. Interviewing them later in life, it's clear he doesn't get why they still like video games, why they never got big-time into schmoozing. It's amusing: the author portrays nerds as childish and dull, but coolness is both an immature conceit and a dull one.

Nerds, he writes, are "inert noble savages". Noble they are, and they only seem inert to someone focused on surfaces.

If you want to understand nerds, I recommend "The Introvert Advantage" by Marti Laney. It's not about geeks per se, but introversion is the core attribute of my people. This guy doesn't even remotely get it.

"American Nerd" (the subtitle is inaccurate; Nugent is a self-admitted emigrant from nerddom) is essentially two books -- one of cultural criticism and one of anecdotes, mostly but not entirely the author's.

"American Nerd" is at its strongest when it focuses on cultural criticism, especially with a historic bent. The chapter on proto-nerds in classical fiction is excellent and thought-provoking, as is the discussion of Muscular Christianity. Some of the other cultural criticism is solidly interesting as well, and much of this material could be profitably expanded into one or more good, long books. Unfortunately, once "American Nerd" gets into the personal and the here-and-now, it stumbles. First, the sketches of nerd subcultures are presented in a brief, facile manner; the intended audience will find little if anything new here. Second, Nugent overgeneralizes from his own experiences and does very little analysis of the people and cultures he encounters. The historical portions of the book suggest that Nugent is capable of a great deal of insight when looking at P.G. Wodehouse or antisemitic "gentleman's agreements", which makes his failure to turn the same eye on tabletop roleplaying games or the Society for Creative Anachronism all the more unfortunate.

I wouldn't say this book is a waste, because it isn't. But it's not what it could or should have been; if I were its editor I would have told Nugent to expand upon his work.

I picked up this book mostly out of boredom one day, and I mean who could resist that title? However reading it I found a lot of things I could relate to, not personally per-se but through my brother.

My brother has sever Tourette's Syndrome and maybe a mild case of aspergers so it was interesting to read how some of his more obsessively nerdy qualities might be related to such. The Dungeon's and Dragon's fascination, the preferring mathematics to liberal arts, etc.

It's not a fantastically deep look into this particular sub-culture, but it's interesting and amusing, which is all I expected from it. I do feel it overlooked some aspects of nerd culture and some categories of nerds, but maybe that's just because I was a prepster nerd myself.

I had a bit of a hard time with this book. While parts of it were completely fascinating and I learned some interesting new information, there were parts of it that were very dull. It didn't help that it read like a stream of consciousness exercise in it's organizational scheme. It skipped back and forth between the history of nerds in America and personal stories from the author's own life, often without much transition between the two types of stories. This kind of writing can be very successful (Stefen Fatsis' excellent book Word Freak comes to mind), but the author doesn't quite make it work here. The book then ends with a personal story, why Nugent gave up being a nerd. This makes one question why he wrote a book about nerds. Is he fascinated with nerds since he used to be one? Does he miss being a nerd? Does he consider himself a nerd once again (which isn't ever addressed in the book)? Why does he call it The Story of My People when he makes it clear that he gave up being a nerd? The ending is quite confusing and really detracts from the rest of the book. Nugent clearly IS a nerd, but he apparently pretended so successfully that he wasn't that he was accepted by the non-nerd community; this make you question the validity of the text, like he might be hiding something from the reader as he hid his nerdiness from his peers as a teen.

The dust jacket makes the book sound completely fascinating, but I felt it was too short to be a good history of nerds in America (the author really glossed over several points rather than delving in deeply where I felt he should have - a true nerd would have gone into more detail!) and it had too much historical information to be a good memoir. Nugent really needed to make up his mind and go with one or the other format because including both made the book seem, at times, overly whimsical or poorly researched. I definitely got something out of the book and find myself telling other people the information I learned from reading it, especially my fellow nerds, but it just wasn't all it could be.

I guess it didn't help that I don't agree with the author's definition of "nerd" either. What he wrote about in the memoir sections of the book (boffing, playing D&D, etc) were really more "geeky" and less "nerdy" by my definitions for the two terms. Nugent really didn't address the distinction, or even acknowledge the differences, which disappointed me. I believe I am a nerd because I am obsessive about topics that make me an outsider, but I'm geek too because I love Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Many people are both nerds and geeks, so it's easy to see where mistakes may be made and why lumping the two groups together might make sense. This lumping could even happen unconsciously to some people. Still, as a person who claims to be a nerd (again, he only really says he USED to be a nerd), you'd think he'd be anal enough to know the difference.

Overall, I found the book reasonably interesting, but I feel it had more problems than positive points. If you're seriously nerdy, this book will likely appeal to you. Based on reviews I've read, this is the demographic the author's book is appealing to anyway. However, if you're looking for historical information or even a memoir of a young nerd, this isn't enough of either to satisfy your needs and you would be better off looking elsewhere.

Although one of of the more interesting & layered treatments of nerds, the book falls short of its promise. It can't quite decide whether it wants to be a memoir or a cultural genealogy of nerds. In the end, it offers too little of both & left me wanting to read more. Definitely worth reading & a breezy read.

American Nerd, the Story of My People"; Benjamin Nugent's look into the subculture of nerdism, is a mix of facts and memoir. He looks back at his childhood, spent with similar boys, all finding fantasy games, books and computers easier to face than their peers. The safety found within orderly game rules, programming and building their own worlds protected them from the scorn and insults of their classmates and the worry and well-intentioned help of adults. Their banding together and imaginations eased lives touched by divorce, abuse, economic scarcity, and helped them navigate the treacherous waters of adolescence. Looking back at his childhood and teen years he also has to come to terms with the way he moved away from these friends, sometimes without explanation.

At times the text seems to push too hard when trying to establish the scholarship of the "nerd as subculture" idea. It is interesting to see the idea of grouping intellectual and physical outsiders existed far before the term came into vogue. There are examples in popular culture: Revenge of the Nerds, The 40 Year Old Virgin and Dungeons and Dragons and Halo. Being branded a nerd does not doom one to social outer darkness. The new world of Internet gaming provides a social gathering place for "nerds"(I immediately plan to cut my World of Warcraft hours). Sword fighting by the Society of Creative Anachronism and like activities helps to dispel part of the myths that nerds are physically frail and doomed to social exile. The business world actively courts those with computer savvy and ability to think outside the box. A great book for the nerd and anti-nerd alike(aren't we each a bit of both?).

The book is entertaining and informative, but has some glaring omissions. First, as Hilary "silverfoil" already mentioned, Nugent gives far too little mention to female nerd. (Did he not know enough of them?) Second, there is absolutely no mention of "athletic nerd" -- and yes, such creature exists and is not all that rare.

To quote "Care and Feeding of Hacker" (and the fact that I know of this document is proof of my nerdiness right there!):

"Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at all and are determinedly anti-physical. Among those who do, interest in spectator sports is low to non-existent; sports are something one *does*, not something one watches on TV.

Further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague. Volleyball was long a notable exception, perhaps because it's non-contact and relatively friendly; Ultimate Frisbee has become quite popular for similar reasons. Hacker sports are almost always primarily self-competitive ones involving concentration, stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto racing, kite flying, hiking, rock climbing, aviation, target-shooting, sailing, caving, juggling, skiing, skating (ice and roller). Hackers' delight in techno-toys also tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty complicated equipment that they can tinker with."

Replace "hacker" with "nerd" (the former is a subset of latter, anyway), and the quote holds true. I am a "scuba nerd", among other things -- I may have highly specialized interests to the exclusion of much else, but no one would call me an "effeet stick-figure". Scuba is also an activity that enables me to socialize with supposedly non-nerds, but are they really? So many scuba divers I know seem to be like me -- obssessed with technical details of the sport, rarely talking about anything else, and working in computer/engineering fields, that I suspect scuba is actually the ultimate nerd activity -- your LIFE depends on maintaining and correctly using technology and you build up your body for highly specific goals (almost like tuning a machine), yet there is no confrontation, and unless you act stupid (like a testosteron-addled jock?), your challenges are never greater than what you want them to be. How cool is that?

Finally, I think Nugent overestimates the amount of self-loathing among nerds and Aspies. Self-loathing and/or feeling of alienation certainly exists, and I experienced my share of it, but it seems to me that nowadays a lot of young women had realized that engineering major with glasses is liable to make a lot more money than the jock on the football team, and seem more tolerant of his social failings -- perhaps because these women themselves grew up on IM and texting? And as I know from personal experience, engineering majors want some *minimal* acceptance but do not feel the need for popularity. Getting laid regularly is enough to be content, and for self-loathing to disappear.