Conspiracy Theories: A Guide to the World's Most Intriguing Mysteries

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The author gets there in the end, but there was too much hand-wringing in my opinion about why people virulently reacted negatively once's Thiel's role in the Gawker takedown became revealed. Not that complicated... Also, for the greater context of the story, it was beneficial for me to read Robert Greene, Ryan Holiday's mentor. He is famous for: It could be the naming of characters after Bond villains – the mysterious unelected Conservative fixer about whom she has collected so many spectacularly libellous-sounding stories that he cannot be named is dubbed “Dr No”. Or even the way Dorries, a woman far sharper than critics suggest, casts herself for narrative purposes as a political ingenue, roaming Westminster asking impossibly wide-eyed questions as she tries to establish who killed Boris Johnson’s career. Eventually, our amateur sleuth discovers it’s … Rebekah Vardy’s account! Just kidding: apparently it’s a sinister cabal called “the movement” comprising Cummings, Michael Gove, spin doctor turned BBC executive Robbie Gibb and various lesser-known apparatchiks who have “set out to control the destiny of the Conservative party” for 25 years. And that’s where the story falls apart. This is an excellent book. It reminds me in some ways of one of my favorite nonfiction works, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, and not just because there is some overlap in topic. Like Cultish, Conspiracy is written with good humor and a lot of compassion towards the people who fall down the rabbit hole. It's funny and generous, freely pointing out the places where conspiracy theories have proven completely true (#freebritney, anyone?), and where people in authority have really not HELPED the anti-conspiracy-theory cause (spoiler alert: the CIA features in several of these examples). The history of conspiracy theories, it turns out, is a fascinating one, rife with prejudice (especially antisemitism, with class prejudice coming in a close second), miscommunication, and cognitive distortions. It's written with a light hand, with liberal applications of snark.

Most contributions to the JFK book depository have fingered at least some of the figures in the Garrison-Prouty conspiracy theory. The most recurrent prime suspect has been Cuba, which had been infuriated by the Bay of Pigs operation – Kennedy’s failed attempt to depose the Castro dictatorship through a CIA-run invasion by Cuban exiles. The communist island also features in Oswald’s still-mysterious trip, weeks before the Kennedy shooting, to Mexico City, where he apparently hoped to secure a visa to defect to Cuba. I loved that this book went deep into history to explain conspiracy theories and show how they grow and adapt over time to fit various situations. I also really enjoyed the fact that we got to actually see the evolution and a lot of the time, the contradictions of conspiracy theories. All of this, of course, leads me to one conclusion. The whole thing was a conspiracy to make me go to that last bookstore. The new employee at the other bookstore was clearly a plant. It's the only explanation that makes sense. Do your research, sheeple!Bollea was genuinely crushed by all these events. When he sued Gawker, though, he didn't really have a hope of winning. He wasn't nearly rich enough to take on the Gawker empire. Until Peter Thiel came along.

This book got my attention while strolling through a book shop since I, supposedly like so many, have had some long-lasting relationships put severely to the test due to people close to me going down the rabbit hole during the very demanding years of Corona. More than one tear has been shed in our house due to the unshakeable feeling that some friends had entered some kind of cult, or were at least displaying cult-like thinking. But the most interesting of all the literary retorts to the Warren report is Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery (1995), which used KGB material released in post-Soviet Russia to illuminate the formative period that Kennedy’s presumed assassin spent in the USSR as a young man. However, despite this period deepening the mystery of Oswald’s motives, the generally anarchistic Mailer eventually concludes: “Every insight we have gained of him suggests the solitary nature of his act.” Mailer’s sly comparison of the assassination with masturbation underlines his theory that the killer was driven by narcissistic egotism, rather than an external commission.One question people asked a lot in the aftermath of Gawker's shutdown was: do we want to live in a society where a vindictive billionaire can spend years and tens of millions of dollars to ruin someone’s life? A better question is: do we want to live in a society where a blogger can spend fifteen minutes to do the same thing? The phrase “conspiracy theory” was coined by philosopher Karl Popper. In his 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies, he discusses the “conspiracy theory of society”: the idea that major events are the “result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups”. Some podcasts and articles have given me some insights, but this book definitely serves that purpose as well. In all, it's both scary and oddly calming to come to the well-researched realization that this 'golden age of the conspiracy theory' is neither the first nor the last time humanity finds itself in one. Vice-president Lyndon Baines Johnson takes the presidential oath of office in Dallas, Texas, two hours after Kennedy was shot. Photograph: Reuters

Conspiracy by Tom Phillips and Jonn Elledge is a must-read book for the conspiracy-heavy time we are currently living through.Perhaps we have too few conspiracies, not too many. Too little scheming, rather than too much. What would happen if more people took up plotting, coordinating how to eliminate what they believe are negative forces and obstacles, and tried to wield power in an attempt to change the world? We could almost always use more boldness, and less complacency.” That's the short version, but the long version turns out to be detailed, fascinating, and a far-reaching epic story that touches on political biases, the culture wars, and meditations on the nature of conspiracy and revenge. I listened to the audio version of this book, and I must say, in the future, Holiday should hires someone to read it for him. He reads in a constant sing-songy decrescendo that gets more and more noticeable by the end of the book. His sentences are very short, which makes for an easy read, but makes for a difficult listen. Enter GamerGate and the culture wars and then the 2016 election, and the judgment against Gawker became fraught with implications that went well beyond the politics of outing and whether or not it's okay to publish someone's sex video without their consent.

From the Satanic Panic to the anti-vaxx movement, the moon landing to Pizzagate, it’s always been human nature to believe we’re being lied to by the powers that be (and sometimes, to be fair, we absolutely are).

I complain a lot about books (and movies) being overwritten, but “Conspiracy” is the first book in a very long time I wanted to re-edit – in-book, with a marker – and read again. Because as long as he’s staying on topic (the conspiracy to sue Gawker out of business), Ryan Holiday’s book is awesome. He competently lays the foundation and tells you the story in just about as complete a fashion as you could hope for. I went into this book with high hopes, and I am happy to say I wasn’t disappointed. This is one of those rare books that make me want to learn more even if the idea of falling down the conspiracy rabbit hole is terrifying. It does succeed in being reflective though — causing you to think: is it ever right to seek revenge when you've been hurt? Is it right to destroy an individual or institution that you think is incredibly damaging or hurtful to a wide range of people? The word 'conspiracy' tends to be viewed as automatically 'bad', but Ryan forces his reader to question that. Ultimately, I remain unconvinced with Ryan's hypothesis that we need more conspiracies in the world than we currently have. Boris Johnson campaigning for the Tory leadership in 2019, with Nadine Dorries and Liz Truss. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA