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Rating: 
Summary: Rivetting Tale of Conspiratorial Weirdness
Review: Anybody who enjoyed Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum will love Kevin Coogan's tour de force of investigative journalism. Yockey was a neo-Nazi philosopher and conspirator (died 1963) who wrote the neoSpenglerian tome "Imperium", which he dedicated to "the hero of the West" (Hitler). Yockey strove during the postwar years to create a red-brown coalition of communists and fascists worldwide. Needless to say he did not succeed, but today such coalitions are becoming common in Russia, Western Europe and even here in the U.S. (Ramsey Clark, Lyndon LaRouche and the Workers World Party; Lenora Fulani and Pat Buchanan; etc.). Coogan's book will prove fascinating not just to aficianados of the far right/far left Worm Ouroboros but to anyone interested in intellectual freaks and geeks, the occultish and the just plain cultish, and so-called illuminated knowledge. Its the only book I've ever read in which the footnotes are as gripping as the text. Coogan takes the story down into the 1970s, tracing the influence of Yockey's ideas on the National Renaissance Party and other collections of sad bachelors who live with their mothers and take out their frustrations on the Jews. But he also shows Yockey's influence on the Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto, which makes Yockey the godfather of Holocaust Revisionism. Coogan's book has been highly praised by some of the top scholars on fascism and neofascism (for instance, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, the great debunker of the Spear of Destiny yarn and other nonsense regarding Nazi occultism). If Martin Bormann is alive and well in a cave under the ice in Antarctica I am sure he will grudgingly admit that Coogan has done a thorough and accurate job.
Rating: 
Summary: What lies beneath?
Review: Just below the surface of so-called everyday life lurks a whole subculture of malcontents,paranoids,terrorists,holocaust revisionists...well,you get the idea. Francis Parker Yockey smoozed with the best of them(and worst) throughout his clandestine career as a provacateur,neo-nazi subversive who attempted to unite post-WW2 Europe into a New Reich or as Yockey dreams "Imperium".
With a suitcase full of false id's,bogus passports and cryptic notes Mr. Yockey ventured worldwide into this soft underbelly of would-be Cesars and rabid anti-semites, attempting to join up both leftist and rightest factions while forever blaming the two big EVILS...America and the Jews.
Author Coogan documents the movements of this mercurial Nazi through copius research and background info. There's so much research in fact, especially with literally thousands of acronyms from ever-changing organizations that it becomes nerve-wracking trying to keep em all straight. That aside however, this book is essential for understanding the current mindset of Europe regarding the United States and specifically Israel (post 9-11). Wether left-wing or right-wing, pro-nazi pontificators abound in our 21st Century world...just scratch the surface.
Rating: 
Summary: Overwhelming detail about a fringe player
Review: Yockey's admittedly intriguing, but this account grows tiresome. As other reviewers have noted, this book's a third Y., a third his influences (Evola, Spengler, occult and geopolitik tomes), and a third relationships or hunches with realms as varied as S&M, ADL informants, a supposed Auschwitz survivor, pan-European fascists, occult and Indo-European adepts, and more Communists and anti-semites with Jewish spouses than you'd assume. His research is exhaustive, his footnotes beyond the most diligent striver for tenure, and his style starts out journalistically charged but descends for most of the 600 pages into turgid analysis and energetically formulated but often thematically dull reporting. After preparing the reader halfway through for a breakthrough into the New Fascist Order of which Yockey was a harbinger, the rest of the work's anti-climactic. Hard to believe such ideas, expressed so opaquely by their innovators and popularizers, gained any audience at all. Still, I learned about Spengler, Evola, and the Ahnenerbe investigations under Himmler which labored to find pre-Christian foundations for Aryan and European culture. The letters extracted from Yockey's Belgian lover, Elsa Dewette and the antics of Mana Truhill make entertaining reading, and the appendices exploring how Yockey's influence may have echoed into many other niches all record worthwhile information. But Coogan's thoroughness makes for a daunting read, and I fought sleep more than once. It's a useful reference for the very few needing such a work, but I wish the popular biography had been scaled down and more left to the footnotes. I applaud Coogan's skill in managing to summarize so much recondite and often mind-numbing material for a wider audience, and recognize that much of the difficulty with his book comes from the sheer impenetrability of much of this primary material for us dolts.
Rating:
Summary: Nazi Occultists, Illuminists, and Superspies.
Review: _Dreamer of the Day_ is much more than simply a biography of the neoNazi Francis Parker Yockey, it contains an abundance of material, resource information, and footnotes for all those who are interested in the obscure forces moving the fringe political reaches where the radical right meets the radical left. Yockey, who dedicated his book _Imperium_ to "the Hero of the Second World War", was a mysterious individual who was taken in one day by the FBI and just as mysteriously died. Kevin Coogan tells this story of the supergenius mystery man who set out to create a European Imperium uniting forces from the far left and far right. But, more than that, this book contains entire sections on such heroes as Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola. In fact, the book is chock full of information on the secret forces behind Yockeyism, far right politics, neoNazism, and everything from Satanism and death metal music to Russian fascists. You won't be disappointed, and although you may spend several late nights reading intently, you will certainly be entertained.
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