Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries

Product Information

He's met a man who tried to split the atom in his kitchen and asked a conscious robot if she's got a soul.

Jon Ronson is fascinated by madness, strange behaviour and the human mind, and he has spent his life exploring mysterious events and meeting extraordinary people. These stories add up to a picture of people who live under a deliberately constructed veil of self-delusion because they are unwilling to face the realities of their lives.One of the stories involves a man who killed himself because he got in way over his head with credit card debt; another story involves an inventor who murdered his whole family after his fortune evaporated.

To learn so much about someone when they're in absentia due to their death is riveting- when they are such a monolith of an artist, perhaps even more so. Even a preface or a meta-essay from Ronson commenting on the book's contents as a whole would contribute needed weight and impact.Other subjects are equally fascinating such as finding out pop star Robbie Williams is a UFO enthusiast and that Stanley Kubrick was a hoarder of everything related to his film career. Quotation panels, featuring many of Churchill’s well-known sayings and comments, and the opinions of his well-known contemporaries, such as Stalin, are scattered liberally throughout. Frequently hilarious, sometimes disturbing, always entertaining, these compelling encounters with people on the edge of madness will have you wondering just what humans are capable of. Some of the letters written by small children and given to them to answer are heart breaking like “please make mummy and daddy stop fighting” and “I would like to wear more clothes this year”. The people he talks to in Lost at Sea are strange, and rather than indulge them, Ronson asks the tough questions and gets to the root of things.

Ultimately though, there was nothing here to 'sink my teeth into', just lots of fluffy cream and sprinkles. I'm looking forward to expanding my little expedition into the world of weird much further after this book. Lost at Sea" is a fascinating collection of oddball human stories that offers hours of riveting reading pleasure and is a must-read for all readers looking for extraordinary and entertaining non-fiction stories written in an accessible and compelling style. The final chapter examines his legacy and attempts to answer the question: how justifiable is his reputation in view of his achievements? There aren't a lot of happily-ever-afters here, this is real life, after all, but I think you'll be fascinated by all that you find.It's very hard to describe this collection of Guardian and GQ columns written by the author of Men Who Stare at Goats. He tracks down Mingering Mike, the draft-dodging creator of many soul albums that exist only as cover art. It's a great read (or listen), that will give you a lot of material to ponder and talk about with your friends. Ronson then presents the Alpha Course leader Nicky Gumbel's mention of the Book of Joel as a "message from God" (the chapter title) because Ronson's own son is named Joel, but he does not attempt to point out that he was signed up for the course ahead of time, under his own name, and that his family members' names can be easily discovered online.