Tag: Book Review

The Last Days of Cuckservatism

The New American reviews Cuckservative:

Cuckservative is co-written by Vox Day and John Red Eagle. Vox Day is the pseu­donym of a video game designer who has amassed quite a following in the online world with his often-controversial views. Day’s high IQ and technical approach to problem solving is felt throughout Cuckservative. Much effort is given to making the book’s main argument that immigration is the most important issue of our day and that “cuckservatives” are on the wrong side. “Thanks to their cuckservative ideology, America’s self-styled conservatives have literally betrayed the entire purpose of the Constitution of the United States, and in doing so, they have put the very survival of the nation at risk,” the authors charge.

Reading the book, one might easily feel reminded of two earlier books by Pat Buchanan: Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, and State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. The first book detailed the neoconservative infiltration of the conservative movement, and the latter detailed the demographic destruction caused by our immigration policy. Day, much like Buchanan before him, takes the GOP and the conservative establishment to task, but Day comes at it with an almost scientific approach. Cuckservative recounts how, almost from the beginning, the conservative movement was all too willing to purge elements that it feared might hurt its respectability in the eyes of its opponents. These “purges,” which have continued throughout all of the conservative movement’s history even to this day, “indicated a cowardly and submissive willingness to surrender when faced with public criticism.”

The vast majority of the book makes arguments against open immigration and goes into detail on the errors of the pro-immigration arguments espoused by the cuckservatives in the conservative movement. As the book explains, open immigration has been and will continue to be disastrous for anyone looking to secure political victories for the Right. The cuckservatives fail to realize this and routinely label any opponents of open borders and amnesty as “racist” or “xenophobes.” As a matter of fact, the book explains, “Today’s cuckservatives appear to be in a competition with the left to see who can open the borders wider, provide amnesty for more aliens, and add greater incentives for immigrants to retain their own culture in the place of American traditions and values.”

The cuckservative view on immigration is dismantled across multiple chapters. The “Melting Pot” is exposed as a myth. The idea that immigrants from nations with historically leftist governments will somehow miraculously become limited-government Republicans is ridiculed as the “Magic Dirt Theory.” Cuckservative explains that the “extremely high preference for expansive government among Hispanic immigrants is consistent with traditions of government in Latin America since the days of the Spanish Empire.”

These concerns are not just limited to the political realm for, as Cuckservative explains, “import people and you import their culture.” The discussions in the book are especially timely considering the refugee crisis currently unfolding in Europe.

Reading the comments of some of the commenters over there, I can’t help but think some of them don’t so much need to read Cuckservative as they desperately need to read SJWAL.

If you still think that a civil debate where the facts are thoughtfully articulated and the other side’s arguments are humbly but keenly dismantled, you’re not only wrong, you’re 2,400 years behind the times.

Book of the Week: Son of the Black Sword

When I first heard that Larry Correia was dipping his toe into “epic fantasy”, I have to admit that I rolled my eyes a little. How, I wondered, was he going to transform his patented gun porn, in which he lovingly chronicles every detail of a firearm, right down to the special blend of custom gunpowder that was formulated by the gunsmith for maximum impact, and which is of particular appeal to his core audience, into faux medieval terms?

I had visions of entire chapters being dedicated to the forging of Very Special Swords, and frankly, I doubted it was going to be as entertaining; a portrayal of a man testing the heft and balance of a sword just isn’t the same as one competitively testing out the accuracy of a firearm at a firing range. Also, no vampires, werewolves, or Agent Franks.

But I should have known better. The most recent Monster Hunter International book showed how Larry has improved as a writer, both in terms of conceptual originality and characterizations. Son of the Black Sword represents another step forward for him; Correia may be a bestselling author, but unlike other bestsellers in the SF/F field, he has not been content to stand pat and keep churning out the same sort of thing over and over again, he has instead continued to refine his craft.

Son of the Black Sword is not, strictly speaking, epic fantasy. Neither is it high fantasy. I would describe it more as high sword & sorcery as there is a distinct flavor of REH about both the hero and the world, neither of which owe anything at all to JRR Tolkien, much less Robert Jordan, or, some political machinations aside, GRR Martin.

While I was less impressed with the worldbuilding than John C. Wright was, it is a competent use of the seldom-seen-in-fantasy Indian caste system and lends itself nicely to several key aspects of the plot. As you’d expect from Correia, there is a lot of action and the story never bogs down from start to finish. What you might not expect from him is some better-than-average characterizations, and the tale of the protagonist, Ashok, is gradually unveiled in a remarkably sensitive, even touching manner considering that he is a nigh-unstoppable killing machine with no more inclination towards mercy than the average Terminator.

And what you definitely won’t expect from Correia is an intelligent subtext running throughout the novel providing a subtle metacommentary on the civilization-scale challenge facing Western society today. It is so subtle, in fact, that I’m not entirely certain Correia actually intended it, but regardless, it gives Son of the Black Sword an amount of the melancholy depth that endows the Conan stories with enduring power.

Although it will come as unwelcome news to some, Son of the Black Sword shows Larry Correia in the process of transformation from a popular author to a very good author who merely happens to be popular. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys action-fantasy, martial arts revenge thrillers, political intrigue, sword & sorcery, or in particular, RE Howard’s Conan.

New American reviews Cuckservative

The title of the magazine is a little ironic in light of the views expressed in Cuckservative, but it’s a good, substantial, and relatively positive review of the book nevertheless:

Cuckservative is co-written by Vox Day and John Red Eagle. Vox Day is the pseu­donym of a video game designer who has amassed quite a following in the online world with his often-controversial views. Day’s high IQ and technical approach to problem solving is felt throughout Cuckservative. Much effort is given to making the book’s main argument that immigration is the most important issue of our day and that “cuckservatives” are on the wrong side. “Thanks to their cuckservative ideology, America’s self-styled conservatives have literally betrayed the entire purpose of the Constitution of the United States, and in doing so, they have put the very survival of the nation at risk,” the authors charge….

The chapter “Christianity and Cuckservatism” went into depth on the strange decline into far-left racial politics that we’ve witnessed in modern Christianity. As churches across the country lecture their members on the lessons of “white privilege” and “institutional racism,” Cuckservative points out the blatant hypocrisy: “It never seems to occur to these white guilt-trippers that holding today’s white Christians responsible for the sins of their 18th-century or 1960s counterparts is no different than blaming today’s Jews for crucifying Christ.” Christians, both Left and Right, who have bought into the egalitarian premises of the Left and support open-border policies are described as “Churchians” who have nothing in common with traditional Christianity. “The false fruit of Churchian multiculturalism can be recognized by what is happening to Christian churches everywhere from Europe to the American Midwest. So-called Christians are not only actively welcoming those who do not worship Jesus Christ to invade their nations, they are also watering down Christian theology and in some cases, literally tearing down the symbols of Christian worship.”

Overall, the book provides a sound explanation of what’s wrong with the conservative movement, as well as why open immigration policies will spell certain political doom for our side. As an eBook, it’s very affordable and well worth the price. It’s a good book for anyone not familiar with the type of issues regularly covered by The New American, especially for
younger readers who are looking for a primer on the main issues facing us today. Readers with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) background should appreciate the book the most, owing to its technical and analytical dissection of the issue.

The Amazon reviews remain very positive too:

A Must-Read Book!

This book pulls back the covers from the greatest lie of modern politics, the imaginary “benefits” of mass immigration and multiculturalism. Using historical examples, economic evidence, and plain logic, the authors show that our current globalist outlook is nothing more or less than a recipe for conflict and decline throughout western civilization.

I very much enjoyed the section dealing with dishonest “christian” arguments regarding immigration. I am not personally religious, but I am a product of a largely Christian society, and not entirely biblically unlearned. It has been frustrating to me to see so many self-proclaimed “Christians” argue that we must betray our own society, our own children, and hand our entire civilization over to whoever demands it, in order to be good Christians. This section gives a biblical and common-sense answer to such feeble and self-righteous do-gooderism.

If I have any complaint, it is that the authors could have spent a little more time illustrating the economic effects of mass immigration, both the harm done to citizens, and the almost unimaginable greed it takes to sell out one’s own people for cheap labor. Billions of dollars are being made by a tiny number of people, at the expense of an increasingly poor and insecure public. Those profiteering from globalist nation-wrecking are traitors in the strongest sense of the word, and deserve to be treated as such. Whether a globalist capitalist profiteer, a sincere leftist seeking an imaginary multicultural “utopia”, or a false christian peddling white guilt to feel righteous, these deluded people are dangerous to civilization itself.

Interesting that even the non-Christians are capable of seeing the problem with societally destructive Churchianity. And the reviewer is right, the economics chapter is generally abstract and heavily technical, so the impact is perhaps less powerful than if we’d taken Red Eagle’s more storytelling-oriented approach. Mea culpa.

Don’t forget, Cuckservative is now out in audiobook as well.

Reading List 2015

Of the 63 books I read in 2015, the one I enjoyed most was Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase. Brilliant, mind-bending, and quintessentially Japanese. The
worst book I read this year was, again, Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory, although The Spider’s Web, a cheap rip-off written by Charles Osborne that uses an Agatha Christie play as an outline, gave it a run for its vile money. The
most disappointing book was Charles Stross’s The Annihilation Score. I like his Laundry Files but Stross can’t write women to save his life; the story would have been more credible, and more entertaining, if the protagonist had been Bob in a dress rather than his nominal wife.

On the non-fiction side, two Martin van Creveld books were excellent. Castalia published A History of Military Strategy, and van Creveld’s Technology and War is a must-read for anyone interested in history. On
the downside, J.B. Bury’s A History of Freedom of Thought was little more than a historical prelude to the tawdry philosophical works of the New Atheists and its perspective has been rendered irrelevant by subsequent events. The book was particularly disappointing because I am a big fan of Bury’s great editorial work, The Cambridge Medieval History Series.

Keep in mind these ratings are not necessarily statements about a book’s
significance or its literary quality, they are merely casual observations of my personal tastes and how much I
happened to enjoy reading the book at the time. A five-star book is one that I recommend without any reservations, while three-star or above is likely going to be worth your while. As always, I have read more books than are on this list, but I only rate books that I have read cover to cover.

FIVE STARS

A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
Demian, Hermann Hesse
The Book of the Damned, Tanith Lee
65 Short Stories, W. Somerset Maugham
If Symptoms Still Persist, Theodore Dalrymple
A History of Military Strategy, Martin van Creveld
Technology and War, Martin van Creveld

FOUR STARS

Against a Dark Background, Iain M. Banks
Gorilla Mindset, Mike Cernovich
Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity, Mike Cernovich
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu
The Book of the Beast, Tanith Lee
The Book of the Dead, Tanith Lee
The Complete Stories, Evelyn Waugh
After the Quake: Stories, Haruki Murakami
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami
The Changing Face of War, Martin van Creveld
Armageddon, Max Hastings
Japan 1941, Eri Hotta
Carthage Must Be Destroyed, Richard Miles

THREE STARS

Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
Somewhither, John C. Wright
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy Sayers
There Will Be War, Vol. III, Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War, Vol. IV, Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War, Vol. V, Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War, Vol. VIII, Jerry Pournelle
Imperial Stars, Vol. I, Jerry Pournelle
Imperial Stars, Vol. II, Jerry Pournelle
Faces Under Water, Tanith Lee
Saint Fire, Tanith Lee
A Bed of Earth, Tanith Lee
Venus Preserved, Tanith Lee
Pirates of the Levant, Arturo Perez Reverte
Purity of Blood, Arturo Perez Reverte
The Sun Over Breda, Arturo Perez Reverte
Captain Alatriste, Arturo Perez Reverte
Back From the Dead, Rolf Nelson
The Sorcerer’s House, Gene Wolfe
Churchill, Paul Johnson
The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke
History of the First World War, Basil Liddell Hart
The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett
Railsea, China Mieville
How to Deal with Narcissists, Michael Trust
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

TWO STARS

The Annihiliation Score, Charles Stross
Lord Valentine’s Castle, Robert Silverberg 
Hallowe’en Party, Agatha Christie
Murder is Easy, Agatha Christie
Three Act Tragedy, Agatha Christie
Methuselah’s Children, Robert Heinlein
Farnham’s Freehold, Robert Heinlein

The Peril at End House, Agatha Christie
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Year’s Best SF 18, David Hartwell

ONE STAR

Spider’s Web, Agatha Christie (Charles Osborne)
The Wasp Factory, Iain M. Banks
Hero in the Shadows, David Gemmell
A History of Freedom of Thought, J.B. Bury
Grumbles from the Grave, Robert Heinlein

The Chrishanger reviews Cuckservative

Chris Nuttall, the bestselling SF author, reviews Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” betrayed America:

If there is nothing else that can be said about Vox Day – and a great deal of nonsense has been written about him – it is that his mere existence is a testament to the damage done to free speech and common sense by the politically-correct. To try to avoid giving unnecessary offense is a laudable goal, but to declare whole fields of study verboten because of the potential for offense is just plain stupid. Worse, perhaps, when the difference between words and reality becomes impossible to avoid, it undermines faith, the faith we need to keep our society running. Reality does not change on command.

After the runaway bestseller SJWs Always Lie (reviewed here), Vox Day tackles two subjects that don’t, on first glance, seem to go together. On one hand, there is the tidal wave of immigration pouring into America (and Europe) and, on the other hand, there is the supine surrender of American Conservatives to liberal thoughts and ideals that have very little relationship to reality. These people have become known as ‘Cuckservatives’ – a combination of ‘cuckoo’ and ‘conservative’ and the fact that the word itself has been declared offensive tells you a great deal about its power.

While Cuckservative has sold well, it hasn’t taken off the way SJWAL did, despite the fact that immigration is the only serious issue in the presidential campaign and the European migrant crisis has been the primary news item for the last six months.

I think this tends to indicate that many people are still holding out hope that the immigration issue will somehow sort itself out, that it’s not something with which they actually have to come to terms. This is unlike the situation with SJWs, who cannot be avoided in the media, at school, at work, or even, in too many cases, in the family.

“The Most Important Book of 2015”

The Most Important Book Of 2015: SJWs Always Lie

As someone who has been the target of SJW attacks for years, and who has helped bring awareness to their totalitarian interpretation of “justice,” I began reading Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie with enthusiasm. Not only does it go into depth about what SJW’s think and how they behave, it also gives you a strategy for fighting back when they come after you or your organization.

SJW’s have so infected Western institutions and corporations that it
is inevitable you will come face-to-face with an SJW who hopes to harm
you and your livelihood. For that reason, SJWs Always Lie amounts to essential reading for all men. It’s the most important book I read in 2015.

In the universities, in the churches, in the
corporations, in the professional associations, in the editorial
offices, in the game studios, and just about everywhere else you can
imagine, free speech and free thought are under siege by a group of
fanatics as self-righteous as Savonarola, as ruthless as Stalin, as
ambitious as Napoleon, and as crazy as Caligula. They are the Social
Justice Warriors, the SJWs, the self-appointed thought police who have
been running amok throughout the West since the dawn of the politically
correct era in the 1990s.

Vox methodically breaks down the enemy that we have been fighting for
years, including their strengths, weaknesses, and modes of attack.
While information on fighting SJWs are available on various sites and
forums, this is the first time it has been assembled in one cohesive
work.

I very much appreciate the distinction. Regardless of what you might think of him, Roosh has been on the front lines of the cultural war and he has fearlessly continued to stand up for men, even men who disdain and disavow him.

Roosh knows, much better than most of us, the lengths to which SJWs are willing to go to disqualify, discredit, and destroy a man. That is why his praise for the book is so meaningful, and so significant.

They’ve been busy

It’s great to see how David Lambert and Alexandra Hollingshead, among others, have been so totally absorbed with reading all my books over the holidays….

It’s a good thing Goodreads banned the Rabid Puppies group or people might engage in an organized effort to attack authors by lowering their ratings!

This is why we need to establish non-converged cultural institutions and ruthlessly work to keep the SJWs out of them. SJWs will always stack the deck and do their very best to use whatever power they can obtain, be it petty or significant, in the interest of forcing social justice on society. And anyone who challenges their Narrative will not only be attacked, but silenced, and stripped of their ability to defend themselves or respond in kind, to the extent that the SJWs are able to do that.

“Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens should be made in the utmost degree to converge.”
 —John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, 1861

Fortunately, efforts on several fronts are already underway, and your help will be needed on some of them. We’ll be having the January Brainstorm as soon as I get a time and date from the panelist I’ve selected, and we’ll be discussing the current state of the project I’ve chosen as my top priority as well as the panelist’s upcoming project.

It’s going to be short notice, so be prepared for that.

UPDATE: By the way, note that for all their posturing, SJWs clearly hate it when you call out their reviews for the ideological trash that they are.

I do suspect you’re a fake profile, much like some of the other lice which crawled all over my reviews of Day’s stuff.

Always hit back twice as hard. Remember, they are fragile creatures of little accomplishment; in many cases these attack “reviews” are their only sources of pride.

Better than the story

Quite possibly longer as well. This is an epic review of “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love”:

I thought it was cool that the girl narrator loves dinosaurs so much. I
mean, really, who doesn’t love dinosaurs? Especially the T-Rex. The
Biggest, Meanest Big Bad of the Big Bads. Awesome. Well, ok, a five foot
ten inch T-Rex. So not the biggest, but at least the meanest right? And
she feeds it live meat and it’s gory, so still cool, right?

Then
the T-Rex starts singing lullabies, and performing musical theater.
Then it gets married. Whoa. What happened? That’s not the Biggest,
Meanest Big Bad of the Big Bads – that’s Hugh Jackman! Which would still
be cool if it was Wolverine Hugh Jackman, but it’s not. It’s The Boy from Oz
Hugh Jackman. The gay Hugh Jackman. Not that there’s anything wrong
with being gay. I love gay men. Well, I mean, not like that, I enjoy gay
– yes, people, gay people. They’re wonderful.

So just as my
attention starts to wander and I’m thinking about Hugh in all his tight
glitter clothes and sparkley man glory, well, then suddenly the story
twists into this awesome piece of violent dinosaur revenge porn! Just
like Man on Fire with Denzel, but toothier!

Now it’s
got me again, Hugo award for sure! Men soaked in gin and malice? Oh,
yeah, baby, bring me some of that! Ah, I mean, what a beautiful word
picture. Men, gin, malice… mmmm… beautiful. So now there is blood
everywhere, evil cackling laughter, widows and orphans – wooo! I’m out
of my seat cheering on the five foot ten inch T-Rex – and then she’s
back talking about a wedding again for gosh sakes. And it’s not even a
blood soaked Carrie kinda wedding, but a green chiffon wedding – does Hugh have green eyes? I guess I’ve never looked at his eyes.

Then
we find out that the narrator actually hates her fiance because he’s a
pussy who can’t win a bar fight! In her imagination she loved this
awesome man mincing T-Rex that waded through pools of revenge blood but
in real life he was just… a disappointment. He wasn’t the bar fight
winning, beer drinking, tattooed, six foot six inch, 300 pound Hells
Angel alpha male she wanted, just some New York hipster in skinny jeans
who couldn’t take a pool cue across the face.

She wrote this
whole story to rip away the tiny bit of masculinity her fiance still
possessed. A masculinity wax job. That. Is. Cold. I mean, not every man
can be Wolverine Hugh Jackman, but please, why does she hate gay Hugh
Jackman so much?

5 Stars for awesome dinosaur revenge porn – minus 4 stars for the homophobia.

Kindle Monthly Deal

I’d meant to mention this on Monday, but I was a little distracted by putting the final editing touches on Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America, then by the San Bernardino Climate Change Event that had absolutely nothing to do with Islam, which, by the way, means “peace”. I think we can all agree that the recent Climate Change Events in Paris and San Bernardino only demonstrate the vital importance of the global climate accords in Paris.

But before the focus shifts to Cuckservative – and I’m confident it will, one early reviewer says “You hit this one out of the park” – I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Amazon selected SJWAL “for a Kindle Monthly Deal on both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.au, running 1-31 December.” So, if you’re in the UK or Australia, the price of the Kindle version has been significantly discounted.

However, despite SJWAL being pushed by Amazon, there may be some hinky business taking place with regards to whoever is overseeing the reviews:

A while back I wrote a five-star review of your book on Amazon. They
still haven’t ‘approved’ it. As a test, I wrote new one tonight for [another Amazon product] I had bought. It was approved within minutes.

Regardless, you penned a wonderful book and I enjoyed it immensely. It
really opened my eyes and changed my attitude…which had largely been
defeatist toward the SJWs.

Two other detailed reviews have been posted recently, one by J.D. Bentley:

I knew nothing about Vox Day a couple weeks ago when his book, SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, was recommended to me by Amazon. The title of the book caught my attention, but the cover even more so: an innocent, amiable smiley face bearing a forked tongue, incredibly suitable symbolism for SJWs who bully with their venomous pseudo-compassion, and insatiable thirst for the glow of self-righteousness and moral superiority. 

It’s always good to know which covers are effective and which are not. And there is also a review by Death Metal Underground; apparently the metal scene is also undergoing an entryist attack by SJWs:

The information in this book will be useful to metal band members and concert organizers who are the targets of SJW attacks. Vox demonstrates, using numerous examples of attacks, that the worst thing these targets can do is apologise, as doing so simply hands the attackers “a confession to bolster their indictment.” In fact, if one learns only a single thing from this book, it should be that SJWs can’t be reasoned with at all: do not engage them in good faith, do not expect them to be honest in any way, and just plain do not take them seriously. This should come naturally to members of an artistic movement fascinated with aggression and violence. And yet, #metalgate has shown us that heavy metal is in the SJWs’ crosshairs.

Both reviews demonstrate the importance of continuing to review, tweet, and talk about books like SJWAL and Cuckservative, because a) one never knows how the word is going to leap from one insular community to the next, and b) they have practical applications in those other communities that are beyond anyone’s ability to readily foresee. For example, it doesn’t surprise me that OSS leaders like Robert Rosario and esr would find SJWAL to be useful because I know the OSS communities are under attack. But heavy metal? North Heights Lutheran Church?

It’s one thing to say any community is potentially vulnerable to SJW entryism, and another to actually see the vast extent of it. In any event, the recent reappearance of more one-star fake reviews is a good sign that it is beginning to penetrate new circles.

Speaking of the upcoming new release, if you want in on the bonus books (one of which, I will warn you, is a spectacularly and hilariously vulgar anarcho-libertarian spin on the music industry), be sure to sign up for the mailing list on the left sidebar.

Book Review: Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity

Mike Cernovich is an interesting man. He combines the energy and up-with-people positivity of a perma-smiling pro seminar presenter with a laid-back personality of a California surfer. He’s both a lawyer and ex-military, but it’s hard to detect even the smallest sign of either aspect of his background. I met him for the first time in Paris this summer, as we co-hosted the GGinParis event with Milo, who at the time was the common link between us. (One thing people often don’t realize about Milo is that he excels at putting people in touch with each other.) Mike and I hit it off right away; it didn’t hurt that his fiance Shauna also happened to hit it off well with Spacebunny. And while I was aware of his health-and-fitness thing – the man is not only big, but he is an inveterate walker as well – I hadn’t actually read his blog. And since I never listen to podcasts, I wasn’t familiar with his popular Danger & Play podcast either.

But after having the chance to hang out with Mike and Shauna again in Spain, then reading Mike’s Gorilla Mindset and discovering the inspirational, if literally bone-chilling magic of the contrast shower, I was looking forward to reading his new book of essays, Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity, which are largely taken from his blog posts. They were entirely new to me, and I was, frankly, surprised to discover that it was in many ways more directly relevant to me and my objectives than Gorilla Mindset. This makes sense, actually, since mindset has never been a problem or a challenge for me, whereas a number of the issues that Mike addresses in the new book have been one or the other.

In fact, I found myself repeatedly highlighting various passages in the book as I was reading it in the gym, including the following:

  • If you’re a momentum type, your brashness and boldness creates opportunity but also leads to costly mistakes.


  • Unless I bow down to the SJWs I will always be under attack. I’ll always be a “bad” person. Only the complete and total surrender of your soul will placate the SJWs who went after Matt Taylor. That’s not going to happen.


  • Cast aside any aspirations of mainstream acceptance, unless you’re willing to crawl on your knees before Gawker.


  • Making money ethically is a sure sign that you are delivering value and goodwill to the world.


  • learn how to focus on vision rather than on what you’re afraid of.


  • The little people, the flunkies, the peons: they are the ones that want to cut you down. The big guys, they respect the audacity.


  • Think like no one else thinks by noticing what no one else notices.

Now, one might be tempted to dismiss the book as a collection of cheerleading platitudes, except for the fact that the platitudes are the direct conclusions drawn from the experiences that Mike is recounting. He isn’t blithely quoting someone when he cites “Patton or some Prussian general” in advising audacity; he clearly doesn’t even know where the quote originates! Instead, and more importantly, he is summarizing what he learned from the various experiences recounted and what you can therefore apply to your own life.

(As it happens, the famous aphorism was coined by Georges Danton, the French revolutionary: De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace. Mike was fortunate to avoid citing him as an example, however, considering that Danton was eventually beheaded by the Jacobins.)

Far from being a criticism, though, this is actually an example of the book’s fundamental strength. It is focused on deeds, not words, action, not reflection, practice, not plans. It doesn’t matter in the least who said what when, the point is that the reader needs to learn to be audacious in the way Patton and Rommel and Mike himself succeeded by being audacious. For those who are given to spending all their time planning, wishing, and dreaming instead of doing, this book should act as a direct shot of adrenaline.

Mike’s literary persona is not an intellectual one. It is, rather, that of a big brother, telling his little brother to stop being such a jackass, stop uselessly spinning his wheels, and do what big brother’s experience suggests will work for him instead. If self-help writers were NFL coaches, Mike Cernovich would be Bill Belichick. Do your job. Don’t worry about the other guy. Just focus and do your fucking job!

Which leads me to the one weakness of the book: the language. It’s not a book you would necessarily want to give to a young man under the age of 18. The saltiness and worldliness of the book is not inappropriate, nor is it particularly offensive by modern standards, but it does tend to preclude giving it to teenagers or putting it in your local school library. I didn’t hesitate to have my son read Gorilla Mindset, I would probably wait until he was 18 or 19 to have him read Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity.


Nevertheless, I will definitely have him read it when the time comes because the lessons it contains are that important. I firmly believe that if I had read it at 18, I would have avoided several significant mistakes, including the single biggest one of my life, which was not dropping out of college after my third semester there. Because if there is one lesson the reader learns from the book, it is that doing things simply because everyone else does them that way is the most certain path to mediocrity, frustration, and failure.