From the very first page of this compelling book, you’re in the thick of it. James Bloodworth describes participating in a course to teach him how to pick up girls in London’s Leicester Square. That was twenty years ago. And my first thought was, wow, Bloodworth has been doing research for twenty years. But … no, he was actual a somewhat confused very young man at the time and while he regrets what he did, he learned stuff.

And much more stuff later on as he attended various events and interviewed people in the “manosphere” — the largely online universe in which men rant about how evil / stupid / powerful women are. Some of those men go on to commit hate crimes against women, including murder. Much of this is a horror story — but a real-life horror story.

Others have written about all this before, though not with this depth. And Bloodworth adds a unique element to the story — he reveals the close links between the manosphere and the far Right, including Donald Trump. He takes us deep into the rabbit hole where dangerous woman-hating extremists discover who “really” runs the world — and, no spoilers here, they mean the Jews.

This is the kind of journalism I have loved since I first read the 1940’s best-seller from the U.S., “Under Cover”, in which an anti-fascist journalist joins the various pro-Nazi and pro-appeasement groups that were quite strong at the time. It takes real journalistic talent — and courage — to pull this off.

Lost Boys is essential reading.