American Nerd: The Story of My People

#371
Title: American Nerd: The Story of My People
Author: Benjamin Nugent
Year: 2008
Publisher: Scribner
225 pages

This memoir-cum-treatise is hard to classify because Nugent mixes genres. Part memoir, part sociology, part speculation, it does not cohere as much as this nerd reviewer would like.

Speaking of this reviewer, I must say that Nugent does a poor job of characterizing female nerds. I know that I'm a nerd because I was told so; just as Jews may agonize about whether they're really Jewish, and nerds may endlessly dissect their relationship to nerdiness, the bottom line is, when they come for the Jews, will they come for you? The answer is, when they come for the nerds, they will come for me, because the minutiae of determining nerd versus something else is a nicety of no import to Those Who Come for Nerds.

Nugent, by the way, dabbles in nerd-dom but attempts to renounce it and distance himself from it. What a nerd.