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Rating: 
Summary: Waste of Time
Review: Mr. Fussell has written one book too many. This is a stream of thought on the subject. If ever there was an opportunity to illustrate, it was missed here. At less than 200 pages, he was obviously in a hurry. One wonders, why he even started. I heard an interview with him on NPR and it was interesting. Perhaps, Mr. Fussell should consider selling the tape.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting topic; boring presentation
Review: Okay, I'll admit it. I borrowed this book from the library and I'm glad. Glad that I didn't pay money for it. It really sounded like an interesting topic...chapters on just about every group that wears a uniform: military (of course...actually several chapters in all), military reinactors, delivery men (FedEx, UPS, Post Office), nurses, doormen, ushers, athletes, you name it. Well, the delivery is just downright boring. The author writes as if he is trying to be scholarly. But then he lets his personal biases come poking through in little parenthetical comments. He's really big into finding a sexual meaning behind almost everything (military shoulder boards, football shoulder pads, even the UPS driver's shorts) and has a real fascination with buttons. Yeah, I guess a lot of uniforms have buttons, but it gets really old after about the fifth revelation. Gee, Gen. Patton liked silver buttons. Great. Anyway, I found the book to be a disappointment. I kept waiting for it to get better and it never did...I read about two thirds of it over six or seven nights and then just quit. Don't waste your time or your money on this one. Even if you suffer through it once, I guarantee you won't come back to read it again.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the read
Review: This book was a disappointment. My expectations were of something much deeper than the surface this book examines. Very little effort is put into unpacking the psychological "condition" of a uniform's wearer, past and/or present. Instead, one finds page after page of wordy musings on the decoration of uniforms and personal biases. Our intellect is a bit more evolved than this book suggests.
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