Book Review: Them, Adventures With Extremists by Jon Ronson

A few weeks ago I read Ronson's third book Men Who Stare At Goats and afterwards I decided to read this one, his second book which was published in 2001, since my local library also had it. Ronson has a writing style that goes smoothly and keeps the pages turning. Basically he interviewed and spent time with various leaders of fringe groups, including a radical Islamic activist, the head of the KKK, various conspiracy theorists, politicians and so forth. The more time he spent and the more he learned about them as people the more he wondered if what they said made sense and was he turning into one of them? He was chased by Bilderberg security, attended a Klan cross burning (or lighting as they call it) and was unmasked as a Jew at a Jihad training camp. He also infiltrated the yearly Bilderberg meeting (supposedly who not so secretly control the world) in the Bohemian Grove in California. There's a lot of funny things here but also a lot of unsettling ones as well. In 2005 the rights of the book were purchased to make a movie from it with Jack Black starring and Edgar Wright directing but so far nothing has come of it.