Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them by David Anderegg

Product Details

The Barnes & Noble Review

One's first assumption when approaching a book titled Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them is that the book will be lightweight fluff, superficially assembling pop-culture iconography relating to the topic. But that's a lazy assumption, and David Anderegg's book is a thorough testament to how lazy assumptions relating to the conceptual category "nerd" have fostered unnecessary bitterness and wasted potential, both to individuals and our society as a whole. Anderegg's stone-serious thesis is that this category an entirely constructed social straitjacket arising from a host of buried cultural biases, both learned and hardwired into our deeper natures. A teacher, children's psychotherapist and keen observer of media, Anderegg sets out to define -- and dismantle -- this destructive paradigm. In fairness, he likewise laments the many ways that the "pops" (the cool kids) also suffer from such artificial dichotomies. While he does privilege certain elements of the nerdly Weltanschauung, he is mostly intent on eliminating cruelty to all classes and bettering the flawed educational system where such pernicious memes breed. Rich with contrarian insights -- Anderegg's text is highly persuasive, readable, and quotable. "Disney's High School Musical…may, in fact, be the final nail in the coffin of American competitiveness…" Try trotting out that observation at the next PTA meeting you attend, and see how long it takes for the other parents to label you a nerd. --Paul DiFilippo

Synopsis

A lively, thought-provoking book that zeros in on the timely issue of how anti-intellectualism is bad for our children and even worse for America.

Why are our children so terrified to be called "nerds"? And what is the cost of this rising tide of anti-intellectualism to both our children and our nation? In Nerds, family psychotherapist and psychology professor David Anderegg examines why science and engineering have become socially poisonous disciplines, why adults wink at the derision of "nerdy" kids, and what we can do to prepare our children to succeed in an increasingly high-tech world.

Nerds takes a measured look at how we think about and why we should rethink "nerds," examining such topics as: - our anxiety about intense interest in things mechanical or technological;
- the pathologizing of "nerdy" behavior with diagnoses such as Asperger syndrome;
- the cycle of anti-nerd prejudice that took place after the Columbine incident;
- why nerds are almost exclusively an American phenomenon;
- the archetypal struggles of nerds and jocks in American popular culture and history;
- the conformity of adolescents and why adolescent stereotypes linger into adulthood long after we should know better; and nerd cultural markers, particularly science fiction.

Using education research, psychological theory, and interviews with nerdy and non-nerdy kids alike, Anderegg argues that we stand in dire need of turning around the big dumb ship of American society to prepare rising generations to compete in the global marketplace.

The Washington Post - Rachel Hartigan Shea

In his breezy book, Anderegg deconstructs the stereotype, traces its history and makes the case that it undermines individual kids and the country as whole…Anderegg points out that there's very little research on what effect the nerd stereotype has on how kids learn and interact…And one may quibble with his narrow definition of the subspecies, as someone who is interested just in science and math…But Anderegg's clear-eyed look at a damaging cultural truism does nerds and jocks—all Americans, really—a service.

Biography

David Anderegg, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at Bennington College in Vermont and has maintained a private practice of psychotherapy in Lenox, Massachusetts, for the past seventeen years. Anderegg's op-eds have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, and Newsday, and he has been quoted as an expert in his field in The New Yorker, USA Weekend, The Wall Street Journal, and Psychology Today, among others.