Brendan the History Nerd Toddler, the cult-followed book review idiot

This guy on Goodreads.

He calls himself, after his name, "History Nerds United."

Worse, he has a website, which he started three years before joining Goodreads. (Or rejoining, or jumping from Amazon, reading between some lines.) I had thought of deleting this post until I clicked through, but the "about" made me double down instead. 

First, plenty of history lovers, like me, don't consider ourselves "nerds." And, from that about:

Brendan Dowd is a full-time government consultant but is always a History Nerd. He lives in Vienna, Virginia with his daughter whom he regularly tortures with the double whammy of dad jokes and history jokes. He is the son of a history teacher (big surprise) and is originally from New York.

If your mom or dad think they're a nerd too, oy vey. 

Related is that this plays up to all sorts of history stereotypes. (And, if your mom or dad do that, too? Oy vey.)

I called him, in a comment on his review of "The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV" the History Toddler instead of Nerd. Why? This:

I plan on going on quite a bit of diatribes in this review. So, before you say, "Brendan can you get to the point, please?" I will summarize it with this. Helen Castor's The Eagle and the Hart is magnificent and you should read it. It is long and in-depth but never boring. It is a dual character study while also putting its time period in perspective. It is definitely going on my list of best books of 2024. Okay, now on to the diatribes! If you want to exit now, I thank you for your time.

Still with me? Great! Now that the impatient and rude people have left, let me tell you something. I believe Richard II might be the reason men named Richard are nicknamed Dick. (My apologies to all Richards who do not deserve it.) Do I have any scholarly source on this? Absolutely not. Will I look it up? Definitely no. Was this all to elicit a cheap laugh from those people who share my sophomoric sense of humor? Not entirely! Castor's narrative did make me believe he is one of the worst English kings in history.

How can anybody take him seriously as a reviewer, at least anybody who actually cares about learning about history in depth? We start with pretentious, pontificating prattle. Then, it's off to insulting anybody who won't agree that his pretentious, pontificating prattle is more than that. Then, there's the claim that, after admitting his humor is sophomoric (grow up), that it has real insight behind that. (It does not.)

And, if he actually cared about history, and about getting his cult followers to learn it, he would have told them that Dick as a synonym for Richard predates Richard II. 

Again, how can anybody take him seriously. Well, his cultish followers do. And, I guess they like being, or at least being called, nerds as well.

So I mentioned that in this bon mot:

God, what a stupid review, with the second paragraph. Perhaps you could retitle yourself "History Nerd Toddler."

Which apparently fed his ego (shock me):

But that means you liked the other paragraphs though, right? By the way, truly enjoy you being so obsessed with my reviews. Thanks for reading!

To which, one last reply:

I just like pointing out stupidities. Otherwise, don't flatter yourself. (Not that that admonition has any chance of success.)

From here on out, I call him out in my reviews, as I first did here.

And also, dood, an occasional comment elsewhere doesn't mean obsessed. I think I've commented on four or five of his reviews.

Otherwise, taking right-wing nut job Maureen Callahan's book about JFK seriously, let alone 5-starring? You're not even serious as an alleged historian. He also reads a lot of semi-clickbait fluffy history.

And, as exemplified by "The Eagle and the Hart," many of his reviews are surface-level, not noting actual historical problems, as does my review. (I'm often the first reviewer to catch such things.)

And, that gets to the real problem. He says he wants to make history "fun." Fine. But, you know, history is more than just a "story." It's about ... history. And, good historical writing is — accurate, factual, empirical, etc., not just "fun."  (I've updated my Goodreads profile with a more extensive version of this.)

In short, Brendan is giving the cult, and non-cultic readers of his reviews, a bad idea of history. 

I'm going to drop this link in occasional reviews by me of books he's also read.

Side note: The cult didn't really develop until the last 18 months or so, it seems. Older reviews of his have generally no comments. So, was the "History Nerds United" itself a marketing ploy? I would have said yes, at first, but seeing the website game before the Goodreads, I am not sure.

Also, I find the "Dear Reader" affectation an insult to Isaac Asimov, whether Soy Boy adopted it in deliberate imitation of him or not. 

That said, the website has one more bit of pretentiousness, which also means no way in hell I delete this.

Above links to his social media sites, he does NOT say "Follow Me."

Rather?

"Follow Us."

You know exactly what you can do with your "royal we," dude. (And, that's what it is; you may do interviews on your podcast, but your site is a one-man band.)

Actually, per the start of the "about," there's more reason yet not to like him.

Former Army brass hat? Now a "government consultant"? He's either a Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ member (State) or military-industrial complex (DoD). Barf me either way. 

Edit: This does not necessarily mean that he works directly for either cabinet agency. Contractors, and not just defense contractors like Lockheed, but outsourced security, intelligence, etc. all exist. DynCorp, Fluor and many others.

Now, other than the cultism? The crux of the problem.

Soy Boy's reviews are often error-laden. This is usually errors of omission, as his likely breezy and superficial reading misses errors in many of his reads. Even worse, for an ex-US Army tanker, many of these errors of omission are in his reviews of military history books. 

Finally, per Rotary's Four-Way Test, which I thought of?

1. Is it true? Yes.
2. Is it fair to all concerned? Per Walter Kaufman, "fair" in reality and abstract are two different things, and fairness can never be universal all at the same time. It's close enough for jazz.
3. Will it build goodwill? Not a concern.
4. Is it helpful to all concerned? See "fair." It's certainly helpful, IMO, to people needing to find good history books.
   

There you are.

And so, if I AM obsessed, I've excised it, and it is now a WAS.