Review - American Nerd: The Story of My People

or, "I didn't know this came with a d20 Monster Manual?"

I purchased American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent last night, after dinner. I randomly couldn't fall asleep and decided it would behoove me to stay up and read the whole damned book. I had become interested in the book shortly after seeing Mr. Nugent on the Carson Daly Show.

Nerds are certainly an interesting subject for a cultural studies/sociological book, but they're also a subject which lacks any real hard research or extended study. So it was with a little trepidation, and a lot of anticipation, that I began the book at 4 a.m. this morning.

The book started out fairly strong with an explanation of the origins of the term (and terms used before) nerd. It's a fairly straight forward origin, but interesting nonetheless. Much of the exploration, though, centers on extrapolating the key characteristics of the archetypal nerd from fictional characters. It's a good idea for illustrating that nerd traits existed early in history, but it is not definitive proof of nerds before 1900.

Throughout the history section, it felt like attention was paid to the historical facts of why the word exists and not so much why nerds exist. And there is only a brief mention of geeks, but no effort is made to explain if they are synonymous or even just related terms. So while it is a great etymological look at the word nerd, without a good deal of context, it doesn't explain why nerds exist at all, other than a pithy (and thrice repeated) Thomas Jefferson probably was a nerd.

The second part of the book focuses on illustrations of nerddom in America. However, most of these miss the mark. Instead of explaining differences among the nerd sub-groups (LARPing, debaters, gammers, etc.) it basically just presents the author's observations of their activities. And they're often not wrapped up in any finite way. It's as if the author is afraid to label the nerds, but the whole point of the book is to explain the story of a labeled people.

What becomes clear through reading the book is that this isn't so much "The story of [Nugent's] people" but "the story of Nugent's evolution beyond nerddom." He admits to a certain amount of alienation from some of the nerd groups. He often talks about growing away from his friends Darren and Kenneth (the two "Case studies" of the book). And, indeed, there are some curious, unnerd-like errors. (The author states that Princess Peach, in the game Super Smash Bros. Melee, is married to "The Prince." A character not in the game.)

And finally we get an awkward epilogue about the author's bad experiences with therapy as a child. It's a bit incongruous to the book, especially since it falls under the heading "My qualifications."


Ultimately, American Nerd is a fun, light read that will help shed some light on nerd-culture. It doesn't attempt to study nerds and it certainly isn't reflective of the author as he is today. Or at least, the author would have you believe he has vastly distanced himself from nerds. It reads more as part memoir, part history book. Perhaps it should be reexamined as being part of "cultural studies." And moved to a more appropriate part of the book store.

I pretty much mirror the sentiments of these two reviewers on Amazon.com.

Here's a link to the book's home page as well. Be warned, apparently they didn't realize that Wired's review calling it a "mock ethnography"is a bit of a backhanded compliment and shouldn't be so prominently placed.


Rating: 3/5