Friday, January 14, 2011

American Nerd

American Nerd: The Story of My People
Benjamin Nugent
New York: Scribner, 2008

Nugent pens a highly readable and amusing tale of his youth and experiences among the nerds: Dungeons and Dragons players, computer gamers... and of course, members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, of whom the author says "...they're nerds who have banded together and found a way to make themselves non-nerds within a separate universe."

The book is quite literate and sophisticated. Nugent does not seem to have been a SCA member but merely to have been aware of the organization. He describes a visit to the Estrella War with evident enjoyment and fairness. "...they've found a way to solve the old problems that Muscular Christianity and the Victorian sports advocates with their physique buttons sought to address."

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