Customer Reviews
Comic book, no investigative journalism here. - By: R. Graham, 02 Apr 2008 
This is an amusing book. Thats it.
It makes Louis Therioux look like an indepth investigative journalist. At least Louis finds an insight into the characters.
Only the last few chapters offer anything interesting & thats just a peak into a redundant clique of wannabes & an interview with Edward Heath.
The author seems more interested in his own secular upbringing than the characters he meets.
For a 'so callled' Cardiff boy we expect better.
Not bad, but lacks direction - By: Nathan Strange, 27 Mar 2008 
It starts off with Jon himself hanging around with the jihad extremist Omar Bakri. This is an interesting start but I found Ronson's style a little slow but I laughed out loud a few times. The two most interesting parts of the book were the Bilderberg chapter & the lizard one with David Icke.
Where Ronson went wrong was to write chapters in the book that seemed irrelevent & which split the narrative structure up. The chapter about Dr Paisley was reallly awful & at this point I debated on putting the book down.
the Ku Klux Clan chapter was pretty good but it was off the mark from who's governing the world? What the book lacked was direction. Jon should've set a goal to find out how the world works, not - how stupid can people get?
By looking at the lives & minds of so many paranoid individuals you see how loony the world sometimes is. However, I got the impression that Jon Ronson wasn't trying to uncover any kind of global conspiracy or find the business cats that are maybe controlling the world. He was just trying to find interesting people to write about & maybe poke a bit of fun at.
The book is kind of uneven & I would've liked to have read more about the Bilderberg group & the surrounding elite groups of the so callled Illuminati conspiracy. Maybe he could've talked to some Free Mason's & some of the members of CFR & the Trillateral commission.
Jon Ronson looks at global conspiracies, with some very surprising results - By: Mr. Stuart Bruce, 18 Jun 2007 
Jon Ronson's "Them" might be described as doing for extremist politicians what Louis Theroux has done to various celebrities. By adopting a harmless, understanding, intelligent & sympathetic persona, Ronson manages to position himself in the confidence of a fascinating selection of 'radicals'- from two different Ku Klux Klan leaders to David Icke- & shows his audience their caring, human, normal life, as well as exposing the true extents of their 'unusual' points of view.
No matter how ridiculous they or the things they say may appear to be, Ronson never ever laughs at them, either to their face or to the audience. At no point does he imply, "ha ha, look at this nutter", leaving that to the audience's discretion. Ronson's partiality, where he manages to be *everybody's* friend, becomes part of the story itself, especiallly when it lands him in some serious danger.
The book reads more like a travelogue than an analysis. A succession of phone callls & chance meetings has Ronson wandering around the globe in unexpected company. The tone of the book is light & enjoyable, making it alll the stronger.
When I first ordered this book on a recommendation I slightly misunderstood the title "Them: Adventures With Extremists". The 'Them' in question is not the extremists that Ronson meets, as I thought. The 'Them' in question are the mysterious behind-the-scenes people that supposedly run the world. Most of the people Ronson meets believe that such a conspiratorial group exists, although they differ in their opinions of who they are- the Bilderberg group, Jews, a 'ZOG', alien lizards... And somehow by the end of the book Ronson has, arguably, *met* 'Them'. It's an incredible feat of a dedicated journalist, & the resulting book is a very good read.
You HAVE To Read This Book - By: , 06 Apr 2006 
'Them' is an astonishing piece of journalism, which I picked up on recommendation & read without budging from the sofa in a day. It's often said journalists are lazy. Not here. Ronson has a talent for snouting out the absurd, & the brass cojones to head straight for its source. How he got these figures to let him shadow them is every bit as mystifying as the Bilderberg group.
The result is a wonderfully funny, & often frightening read. It strips our preconceptions of these bizarre, extremist figureheads & reveals them at their most naked. It exposes their hypocrisies, eccentricities, motives, beliefs, & pettiness, without being cruel. Particularly entertaining is the chapter on travelling through Camaroon with the terrifying Reverend Ian Paisley. It is the snippets of infantile, eavesdropped conversation that makes 'Them' such a shocking, hysterical, & orginal read. Ronson writes clearly, subtly, & sews the plot together nicely on the 'secret-room' thread.
I laughed out loud alll day at these remarkable revelations. Here is a book that will change how you look at the world.
Truth, fiction, I have no idea! - By: Paul Johnson, 16 Sep 2005 This is an interesting book looking into the strange world of extremists & more specificallly trying to track down the leaders of the supposed 'New World Order'. In his travels the author deals with Islamic extremists (or does he, Omar Bakri seems very different here than he does in the newspapers), white power racists, the Ku Klux Klan & David Icke.
Let's face it, any book that features David Icke is bound to be bizzare & likely funny & this very much is. During his travels to learn about the New World Order it gets continuallly confusing as each side (those who believe in/don't believe in) give thier opinions in such a believable way that you don't reallly know who to go with. Ronson does a good job, until the end of the book, to not give his personal opinion of it & you have to form your own judgement.
What I was left with was no idea to be honest. I didn't know what to believe, including the author which was a little annoying. Despite that, it's interesting learning about the strange people that are out there & this is worth a read.
