Just when you thought every possible conspiracy theory had been exhausted by The X-Files, along comes The Men Who Stare at Goats. The first line of the book is, “This is a true story”. The book is the author’s bizarre quest into “the most whacked-out corners of George W. Bush’s war on terror”.

The authors’ exploration of the U.S. military’s flirtation with the supernatural is at once funny and tragic. It reads like fiction, with plenty of dialogue and descriptive detail, but as his investigation into the government’s peculiar past doings creeps into the present ? and into Iraq ? it raises goose bumps. As he reveals, a secret wing of the U.S. military called First Earth Battalion was created in 1979 with the purpose of creating “Warrior Monks”, soldiers capable of walking through walls, becoming invisible, reading minds and even killing a goat by staring at it.

The finely written book strikes a perfect balance between curiosity, incredulity, and humour. His characters are each more bizarre than the last, and he does a wonderful job of depicting the colourful quirks they reveal in their often-comical meetings.