Product Description
Most people know a nerd when they see one but can't define just what a nerd is. American Nerd: The Story of My People gives us the history of the concept of nerdiness and of the subcultures we consider nerdy. What makes Dr. Frankenstein the archetypal nerd? Where did the modern jock come from? When and how did being a self-described nerd become trendy? As the nerd emerged, vaguely formed, in the nineteenth century, and popped up again and again in college humor journals and sketch comedy, our culture obsessed over the designation.Mixing research and reportage with autobiography, critically acclaimed writer Benjamin Nugent embarks on a fact-finding mission of the most entertaining variety. He seeks the best definition of nerd and illuminates the common ground between nerd subcultures that might seem unrelated: high-school debate team kids and ham radio enthusiasts, medieval reenactors and pro-circuit Halo players. Why do the same people who like to work with computers also enjoy playing Dungeons & Dragons? How are those activities similar? This clever, enlightening book will appeal to the nerd (and antinerd) that lives inside all of us.
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 Good but not great ( weavre )
A quick little read, informative and well-written, but lacking energy. It was interesting in the way of extra-length magazine articles, when you've picked up a good one and feel motivated enough to go ahead and finish it. It's not, however, going to be one of history's great books.
Nugent explores the archetype of the nerd through history, examining a few examples of people who exhibited the characteristic traits well before the current label was applied. And, he brings his examination up right through the present into some speculation about the future, raising some interesting questions along the way. He notes, for example, the similarities between the stereotypical behaviors of the "nerd" and the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's, wondering if nerdiness lies along the same continuum as the disorder--albeit much farther toward the norm. He makes some interesting arguments for that case, too, citing for example the increased incidence of Asperger's among "nerdy" families such as those headed by engineers. And, he questions whether these characteristic traits are truly maladaptive, or whether in a different time and place even Asperger's might have been perfectly acceptable rather than diagnosable.
Despite raising such genuinely thought-provoking questions (and there are several more I didn't include here) and sharing some entertaining historical background, this didn't quite hold my interest as well as I'd hoped. Had it not been such an incredibly quick little book, I might well have laid it down--but by the time I'd almost decided to do that, I was almost done with it anyway, and figured I might as well finish it. I'm glad I did, largely because I don't like laying aside unfinished books, but I won't go out of my way to seek out more by this author.
One more note, an afterthought: Nugent's definition of "nerd" is far more narrow than that I hear used in contemporary conversation. When I was a kid, "nerd" was an undesirable label, connoting social awkwardness, myopia, and poor coordination as well as an unfathomable interest in technical matters and science fiction at the expense of fashion and entertainment trends. This is the nerd Nugent writes about in 2008, futher narrowing his scope to a particular range of male nerds. Today, however, my two teenagers embrace "nerdiness" as a positive label through which they identify academically-minded peers who enjoy learning for its own sake and voluntarily flip on TV's science channel. They celebrate wanting to understand how things are done, rather than being satisfied with a superficial awareness that they simply are done. Nugent refers to this use of "nerd" in a positive light, but implies that it's a usurping of an established term, rather than the social and linguistic evolution I think it may be. As academic achievement and technical prowess become more essential to our society, nerds become more acceptable within it; the idea makes sense, but Nugent seems to miss that possibility.
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Worth reading, not purchasing ( i82muchdmb )
I got this from the local library, as I was intrigued by the title and content matter.
I think the author provides a nice broad overview of some aspects of geek culture, but tends to give too shallow a treatment of them. For instance, his chapter on competitive video games. He contrasts Halo 2, a game that can be played online with people miles away just as easily as in a competition setting, with Super Smash Bros. Melee, a game that requires combatants to be in the same room. He says that this aspect makes the Super Smash Bros. Melee matches much more fun to watch, and thus more worthy of being a spectator sport. He fails to address a few issues:
1) Halo also has local multiplayer. It is not as if the online mode is a complete replacement for actual human interaction.
2) Part of what makes Halo a more solitary game is that it's harder to keep track of what's going on in the whole game when looking through the gunsights of a single character. When playing Smash Bros., all combatants fight on the same screen, so it's easy for people viewing to see at a glance everything that's happening.
and most significantly,
3) Why have video games as spectator sports caught on in other areas of the world, most notably South Korea with Starcraft, when they have failed to do so in America? (Note too that Starcraft refutes his point about online capability seeming to make matches less interesting to watch - people could just as easily play matches of Starcraft online as they could live in a stadium packed with people, but the call is still there for these live exhibitions)
My other main complaint mirrors that of another reviewer - the book jumps from topic to topic with very little warning or transition. There does not seem to be much of a cohesive structure to the book.
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Problematic, but still worth a read ( speak04 )
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.
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 Disappointing ( primail )
I purchased the book following a positive review in Scientific America. Unfortunately I found it to be mainly historical observation and hypothesizing, rather than what I hoped would be a researched analysis.
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A for Effort. C for Execution. Too, um, clinical ( misplacedlonghorn )
In short, I was moderately disappointed in this book. I gave it a 3rd star simply because I sympathize to some extent with the object of the book: the nerd. I was not a nerd in school, but I am definitely a geek. As another reviewer noted, the author did a substandard job in delineating the differences between geeks, nerds, dorks, etc.
Overall, the book was not an enjoyable read. It came off as too academic. I enjoy serious, academic books most of the time, but did not buy this book with that expectation in mind.
What someone needs to write is a real geek memoir, not this ethnographic treatise. Perhaps that someone will be me.
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