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kayla_can_read's review
informative
fast-paced
3.75
Fun! Really fun information, really makes the govt looks like a bunch of loons but they’re still mad silly which is scary since they’re the big bad tough agencies in charge of big bad scary projects
jstamper2022's review against another edition
5.0
Pretty neat. Kind of makes me want to start a collection of military unit patches.
robsonjv's review
4.0
I am happy to say I found some errors in this book, and no I won't tell you what they were.
jegka's review
3.0
The book summary listed does not describe this book. It is some publisher's hype, but not accurate. What this book does contain is a smattering of about 40 black world (or not) patches. The projects were not code named "None of your F-ing Business" as the synopsis states...those were just unofficial mottoes on some of the patches.
The author admits this is a very haphazard sampling of some patches, heavy on Area 51 projects. Not comprehensive. Not a historical record. Not even necessarily accurate. But a fun glimpse, nonetheless.
I can't help but think the guy hired to write the synopsis hated either the subject matter or the author...or both. If you are interested in militaria, this may interest you. Do not expect to be educated or informed, simply entertained.
The author admits this is a very haphazard sampling of some patches, heavy on Area 51 projects. Not comprehensive. Not a historical record. Not even necessarily accurate. But a fun glimpse, nonetheless.
I can't help but think the guy hired to write the synopsis hated either the subject matter or the author...or both. If you are interested in militaria, this may interest you. Do not expect to be educated or informed, simply entertained.
xterminal's review
4.0
Trevor Paglen, I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World (Melville House Press, 2007)
As is usual, I haven't read reviews for this book before I started writing this one, but I'd be willing to make you a small bet given (a) what I know about the reviews of Trevor Paglen's other books and (b) what I know of Amazon reviewers in general: there are going to be a sizable minority of reviews of this book that are going to complain, perhaps a lot, about how many of the entries in this book, especially towards the back, have almost no information listed about them. For as is the case with Blank Spots on the Map, much of the material Paglen covers here is still very much classified; even in the cases where he does have more information on a subject than one would expect, it's couched in terms that denote hearsay or speculation. (On very few pages does one see the phrase “[t]his project was declassified in...”.) Okay, I'm willing to concede the point that conspiracy theorists come off a lot more convincing if they actually don't claim to know everything, but few of them back their stuff up as much as Paglen has over the past five years. You don't see a great deal of that in this pocket-size art book, more's the pity; Paglen makes a few references to having got the information from folks who previously worked on these projects, but there's a complete absence of footnotes (where Blank Spots on the Map was loaded with them) here; I think of this as a kind of companion piece to Blank Spots.... It presents a series of patches and emblems worn by military types who had been involved in black projects over the years (Paglen notes at the beginning that he presents them almost at random, and that the collection is in no way comprehensive or exhaustive), with what information he has, and that's it. Like I said, an art book. The commonalities in design are interesting, if not necessarily instructive (one must rely a great deal on Paglen's interpretation if one is to get anywhere in decoding these things), and the whole is grimly amusing, in a way.
And I want a Goatsuckers patch. ****
(For the record: the odd wording of the title is explained in Paglen's discourse on the final patch in the book, the only one close to being long enough to earn the title of “essay”, and the most interesting of the bunch.)
As is usual, I haven't read reviews for this book before I started writing this one, but I'd be willing to make you a small bet given (a) what I know about the reviews of Trevor Paglen's other books and (b) what I know of Amazon reviewers in general: there are going to be a sizable minority of reviews of this book that are going to complain, perhaps a lot, about how many of the entries in this book, especially towards the back, have almost no information listed about them. For as is the case with Blank Spots on the Map, much of the material Paglen covers here is still very much classified; even in the cases where he does have more information on a subject than one would expect, it's couched in terms that denote hearsay or speculation. (On very few pages does one see the phrase “[t]his project was declassified in...”.) Okay, I'm willing to concede the point that conspiracy theorists come off a lot more convincing if they actually don't claim to know everything, but few of them back their stuff up as much as Paglen has over the past five years. You don't see a great deal of that in this pocket-size art book, more's the pity; Paglen makes a few references to having got the information from folks who previously worked on these projects, but there's a complete absence of footnotes (where Blank Spots on the Map was loaded with them) here; I think of this as a kind of companion piece to Blank Spots.... It presents a series of patches and emblems worn by military types who had been involved in black projects over the years (Paglen notes at the beginning that he presents them almost at random, and that the collection is in no way comprehensive or exhaustive), with what information he has, and that's it. Like I said, an art book. The commonalities in design are interesting, if not necessarily instructive (one must rely a great deal on Paglen's interpretation if one is to get anywhere in decoding these things), and the whole is grimly amusing, in a way.
And I want a Goatsuckers patch. ****
(For the record: the odd wording of the title is explained in Paglen's discourse on the final patch in the book, the only one close to being long enough to earn the title of “essay”, and the most interesting of the bunch.)
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