Prof. Ridgle teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia, and he is a competent scholar, but his writing style is too harsh for my taste. His book, "Brutal Minds" is about the grievous misconduct of the residential staffs in student housing and the faculty in most Education Departments that amounts not only to indoctrination but also to cruel brainwashing of the college students who live in the dormitories in almost all colleges and universities. His book also suffers from its repetitiveness nature and its sparse examples of the actual evidence of this wrongdoing by these advocates of anti-racism.

Without even getting into whether and how well Brutal Minds addresses its thesis (the briefest possible responses being ‘kind of’ and ‘poorly’), I have to address the author’s manipulative and objectionable use of sources. I’ll try to be quick, mostly because this book doesn’t deserve more than a few more minutes of my time or attention. I honestly believe that having read the entire thing was self-punishment enough.

My top three source and citation objections:

1. The sources that best parrot the author’s perspective are opinion pieces. I mean, fair enough: there are people out there who agree with him. This is literally the only prerequisite for confirmation bias—but it’s not evidence.

2. A number of footnotes are moot. Some simply restate a questionable claim from the text; others are non-evidential partial quotes, ostensibly included just to increase the number of footnotes. It’s as if the author is banking on the sheer volume of citations to convince readers that his claims are well-researched and valid.

3. The best example of university-wide ‘brainwashing’ that seems to support the overall thesis falls apart if you look too closely. Seriously, when even the cited source asserts that the program was “suspended within days,” it doesn’t do much to convince me of the systemic infiltration against which the author rails.

The overall impression of this book is that of an angry, paranoid screed. Too many chapter sections follow a pattern of claim-no evidence-loaded language. Throughout the book, the writing is hyperbolic: empty prose filled with buzzwords; a veritable logcial-fallacies treasure hunt. (I have to admit that I did love the irony approximately halfway through the book when the author accuses his ideological opponents of relying on “a coded vernacular that is empty of content.” I laughed and laughed.)

The best thing I can say about Brutal Minds is that the author establishes early on that he’s willing to manipulate and misrepresent his sources. And, I’m sorry, but even one footnote that reads “personal correspondence with the author” but leaves the correspondent unnamed is one too many (and, yes, that footnote shows up in this book). Long story short—the observant reader will quickly know not to waste time reading further.

I will be giving a different review to the full product when I am able to read it but the advanced reader copy is unreadable in it's current state. Paragraphs that fall of and the formatting is absolute trash. I will be giving it a fair review once I get the finished product due to this not being a fair review.