Bout of Books 40 Wrap-Up

 I didn't read as much as I had hoped to during the bout of books week, considering that this time of year is generally a good one for me to be reading. I think the main problem was that I started with Isaac-Dovere's Battle for the Soul, which I made some headway in, though I'm beginning to find it to be a  a slog. 

However, I did finish Michael Gould Wartofksy's The Occupiers, which I was reading to prepare for my fall seminar, and found it quite a quick and informative study. I'm looking forward to teaching it. I also finished the audiobook of Ian Rankin's Strip Jack, which I had almost finished, but then forgot about for a while - not the best Rankin mystery. I also started reading John Scalzi's Starter Villain, which is quite entertaining. Not only is it nominated for the best novel Hugo (though I doubt I'll be voting for it), but the artist who did the cover, Tristan Ellwell is also nominated for best professional artist.

Bout of Books 40 Update - Monday-Wednesday

 I read a little bit in the morning, but spent most of Monday at a work mini-conference and then had a post-work plan with a friend, so I didn't get much reading done on the first day of this readathon. 

On Tuesday, I read about 40 pages of Edward-Isaac Dovere's Battle for the Soul and 75 pages of Michael Gould-Wartofksy's The Occupiers, which is my 'read-for-work' book of the moment. This was my best day so far. 

On Wednesday, I had hopes to match Tuesday, but I was distracted and didn't read that much, though I did pick up three books at the public library (two holds that came in: Volker Ulrich,Germany 1923, Calla Henkel, Other People's Clothes and impulse shelf pick of John Safran, God'll Cut You Down) as well as several comics at the comics shop in the evening, including the first two issues of Matt Kindt's new series If You Find This I'm Already Dead which had been accumulating in the "large issues" box along with Jeff Lemire's new run of Swamp Thing. 

Today's music, in honor of reading about Occupy Wall Street is Lupe Fiasco's anthem, with video brought to you by "Shit Scott Walker is Doing to My State" (what that SSWIDTMS stamped on the video means).

I forgot to do the last couple of photo challenges, so I'll have to start doing those again. I guess I still have 4 potential good reading days before this week is over. Onward! 

Academic Reading Challenge Recommendation: Book About an Election or Elections in General

 I was kind of surprised that category 14, Book about an election or elections in general got chosen by the group since this kind of focus in politics can become tedious. However, it is an election year, and we're surrounded by election talk. It seems reasonable to read something about an election, including things that could help put current politics in context. 

This entry's theme song is Black Sheep's "The Choice is Yours" with the chorus that Billboard tells me sums up every election "you can get with this or you can get with that." 

The one that I've chosen to read myself, and which I'm currently about 1/4 of the way through is Edward-Isaac Dovere's book Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump. This is the sort of book that probably turns a lot of people off from reading books about elections. It's a very standard political journalist's take, not an academic analysis, and certainly not a book with a point of view from the left. However, if you want to read an account that includes a lot of detailed "political insider" stuff about the internal politics of various campaigns building up to 2020, this isn't a bad read. I don't agree with a lot of Dovere's judgments of particular policies or politicians, but it's useful to know what those judgments are as I believe they are shared by a lot of people with political power. This is very much an example of American political "common sense," which can make it unintentionally infuriating. Other books about the 2020 election that are worth reading include Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague's The Steal which describes Trump's efforts to undo the results. I read this back when it first came out, and it was very similar to what you might have learned if you watched the January 6th hearings. Another choice might be the Congress's January 6th Report - though consider which edition to get. I got the one with Ari Melber's introduction on the recommendation of my local bookseller. 

A search for books about the 2016 election led me immediately to the role of Russian propaganda in that election. Probably the most authoritative academic study of that attempt is political scientist, Kathleen Hall-Jamieson's book Cyberwar which came out in the fall of 2018. After finding that, I went searching for books about "election meddling" that would cover the US's interference in other countries' elections, and came across this 2021 study Meddling in the Ballot Box by International Relations professor, Dov Levin, which compares Russian and US electoral interference efforts from 1946 to 2000. Another interesting book that addresses recent elections outside the United States is Leslie C. Gates's Capitalist Outsiders about the influence of oil on the politics of Mexico and Venezuela. Another book that begins with a recent election in Latin America is Sebastian Edwards' The Chile Project which includes substantial discussion of the role of the US in undermining democracy in Chile, but also tells the story of the election of Gabriel Boric in 2021. Rather than being a story of the rise of neoliberalism, it's about neoliberalism's fall. Another book about elections and electoral activity outside the U.S., but involving U.S. influence is Amy Wilentz's  The Rainy Season: Haiti Then and Now which updates the author's classic account of the immediate aftermath of the fall of "Baby Doc" Duvalier in Haiti and goes into the 2000s. 

For books about the mixing of elections and criminal conspiracies, why not read about Richard Nixon's rise and fall in the U.S? There are many books to choose from. There's Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in '72 based on his reports for Rolling Stone. I read this book years ago in the summer between my senior year in high school and first year in college, and remember finding it both prescient and hilarious. Or, you could read the classic Joe McGinnis book, The Selling of the President 1968 which features Roger Ailes, who sadly continued to influence American politics for years to come. A relatively recent book on the 1968 election is Aram Goudsouzian's The Men and the Moment, which is also about Nixon's opponents. And of course, you could go for any book on Watergate. There are so many to choose from, starting with the original All the President's Men that made so many people want to be investigative reporters, to the more recent book by Garrett Graff, Watergate: A New History. 

 While electoral play-by-plays can be interesting, elections can also be sites of analysis to understand broader political context. One example of such a book is political scientist, Joe Lowndes' book From the New Deal to the New Right: Race and the Southern Origins of Modern Conservatism which builds from 1948's Dixiecrats to the George Wallace campaigns as a key to understanding the contemporary right.  Speaking of 1948, you could pick one of THREE recent books on Henry Wallace and the 1948 US presidential campaign. There's Ben Steil's The World That Wasn't, published this year, John Nichols' Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party and Thomas Devine's Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential Campaign and the Future of American Postwar Liberalism. 

  If you're more interested in the slightly more recent past, you might want to check out Robert Fleegler's Brutal Campaign about the Bush vs. Dukakis contest in 1988.  This was the same period when David Duke ran for the Louisiana state legislature, sparking an early anti-fascist campaign to stop him. Tyler Bridges' book The Rise and Fall of David Duke could be a great choice for this category. Or, if you're interested in a more academic account, you might take a look at the edited collection from U. of Vanderbilt Press, David Duke and the Politics of Race in the South. 

If you're interested in going even further back in US electoral history to get at the roots of this situation, a friend and mentor of mine recommends Morgan Kousser's The Shaping of Southern Politics, originally published in 1974 as "the best of the older histories" about the establishment of the Democratic Party's one-party white-supremacist rule of the US South in the late nineteenth century. 

If you want to read about elections in Europe, you could go with a real classic, Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte which is about a coup, but also includes a lot of discussion of elections that preceded it. This is really an indispensible book for anyone interested in political analysis in my view.   Another book that concerns a set of specific elections that ends with the end of elections is Benjamin Carter Hett's book about the immediate rise of Hitler, The Death of Democracy which gets into the details of the German parliament during the Weimar period, and also was written in such a way as to highlight parallels with the Trump era. I am not sure how much this book on Silvio Berlusconi focuses on the ins and outs of specific elections, but it looks like it has at least some discussion of the media and "the democratic process" and might be worth a look. For another account of contemporary far-right authoritarianism, Paul Lendvai's book on Viktor Orban, Orban: Hungary's Strongman includes a significant amount of discussion of his path to electoral victory. 

Another book about the election of a major far-right leader outside the US, is the popular book on Modi's election in 2014 by journalist, Rajdeep Sardesai, 2014: The Election that Changed India. I haven't read this book, but the Goodreads reviews from BJP supporters are very negative, which suggests it's a critical analysis of Hindu nationalism. 

A friend who's participating in the reading challenge reminded me that there are also novels about elections. 

One of those is Edwin O'Connor's The Last Hurrah, a classic work about a mayoral race in Boston that was adapted into a movie starring Spencer Tracey. It's now out in a new edition from the University of Chicago Press.  

But if a mayoral race is too serious for you, you could try Tom Perotta's popular novel about a high school class-president race, Election, which was also adapted into a (very funny) movie. 

Philip Roth's The Plot Against America got a second lease on life because of Trump, and also a TV series adaptation. It's one of his better novels, in my view, though I found the ending a bit strange.

Bout of Books 40 - Sign-Up Post

 

The May Bout of Books is the one that gives me the best chance to actually do some substantial reading. My grades are turned in, the big indie-rock festival I go to every spring is over. The only thing stopping me this week is one all-day mini-conference thing at work on Monday. After that, I should be unscheduled and ready to read.

What is Bout of Books? According to the hosts,

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 13th and runs through Sunday, May 19th in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, daily Discord questions, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 40 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

I noticed that they've moved the scheduled chats from the sewer that is Twitter/X to Discord which is nice, though I rarely remember to participate in the chats.

 I've been trying to figure out what I really want to focus on reading this month for my research. I've been working on two different books over the last few years, and summer is the only time I really have to do research. One of these books is about "geek culture" and political conflict in science-fiction and fantasy, which I've been calling "Geek Wars" as a working title. The other one is about anti-fascist politics in the U.S. But I have a couple of other pressing work-related things to do that involve reading. I'm teaching a brand new graduate course in the fall, and need to prepare for that. I've also got a book review to write this summer - and both the book review and the new graduate course are related to the project on anti-fascism. I always try to do at least some "non-work" reading as well, and those books continue to be tempting. 

So far, I'm thinking I'll continue reading Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats' Campaigns to Defeat Trump, which was my choice for the academic reading challenge category 14: "book about an election or elections in general." It's not the best book about an election, but it's a detailed account of the backroom politics of a lot of capmaigns and Democratic strategizing over the last 8 years or so, so is worth reading. 

 I'm also going to continue reading Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky's The Occupiers: the Making of the 99 Percent Movement, which I'll be teaching in that grad seminar in the fall. 

 If I have time, I'm going to go back to Jo Walton's Informal History of the Hugos, which has the benefit of being both fun and related to the "geek wars" project. A less fun book that I started reading for "Geek Wars" before I was forced to focus all my energy on teaching last spring is the Routledge Companion to Science Fiction by Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint (the edition I have doesn't include Adam Roberts).

 I have already given up on this week's book-club selection, 2312 which I'm having trouble getting into, and which is just too long to finish in a couple of days, even if I was really loving it. 

 I guess we'll see what happens. Hopefully I'll be able to settle down and focus on reading something, as I've been very distracted for the last week.

Academic Reading Challenge Recommendations: Books by Recently-ish Deceased Authors (Extra-Credit Category)

I've been super busy with work this spring, so I haven't had an opportunity to post for a while, but I'm finally getting around to this one. I just finished reading my own choice for this category, which was Russel Banks' novel The Darling about a white woman from the Weather Underground who winds up in Liberia, married to a government minister, and then involved in the civil war between Charles Taylor, Prince Johnson and Samuel Doe. The reason for this category's entry into into the challenge was that one of my friends really wanted to read another book by Banks, and thus "rigged" the cateogory. Thankfully, others were interested in reading books by the recently departed.  This category may seem a little maudlin or macabre, but it's true that writers who we may not have paid attention to in life get more attention when they die because of the obituaries that come out. 

Sadly there are many eligible people for this category. Since this category is "recently-ish" I've decided that means within the last five years. I decided to only include authors whose work I've read myself and remember well enough to really talk about, though of course there have been some recent major literary deaths that I haven't included below. 

Since several of the authors I chose were fierce critics of the US government, but also knew, "it's not just American where shit's fucked up." today's musical accompaniment comes from the late Jaimie Branch, a fantastic jazz musician who died in 2022, playing "Prayer for AmeriKKKa pt 1 and 2" 

Here are my suggestions: 

1. Russell Banks Since I've already mentioned him, here's why you should read a book by him. Banks is a meticulous writer who creates wonderfully believable characters. For example, in the Darling, his point-of-view character is Hannah Musgrave, a white woman activist from the 60s, told in flashback from the early 1990s. It never felt "off" to me at all. He also takes on serious political issues without being didactic. I say he's meticulous because so many of his novels are also about distinct historical periods - such as his book Cloudsplitter, about John Brown, which is probably the best work of fiction about John Brown and abolition in general. 

2. Toni Morrison This is my second recommendation for her for one of the reading challenge categories. She counts for this category because she died in 2019, within the last five years. 

3.I've also previously recommended Mike Davis for this reading challenge. He was a prolific writer, and while my first recommendation was in the books about cities category, he also wrote books about other subjects that are very much worth reading, such as his classic book on the American working class, Prisoners of the American Dream

4. The great British novelist, A.S. Byatt  died last year. Her book Possession is one of my all-time favorite books. I re-read a few years ago for one of these reading challenges, and it was still just as fun as the first time. She's also the author of many other books that are probably also excellent. 

5. Another great British novelist, and the winner of two Booker prizes, Hilary Mantel, who suffered from illness for most of her life, died in 2022. As the linked obituary reads, she is most well-known for her amazing historical novels about Thomas Cromwell, starting with Wolf Hall. I also loved her novel Beyond Black sort of like magical realism in British suburbia.

6. If you're looking for an excellent academic book to read by a recently deceased scholar of American empire, Amy Kaplan would be a wonderful author to read at this particular moment because of the way she brought together literary and cultural criticism and analysis of US foreign policy. Her 2018 book Our American Israel, would be an especially good choice this year. 

7. Another great anti-imperialist writer was Sven Lindquist, who died in 2019. His short book Exterminate All the Brutes is one that most of my friends read when it first came out in translation. In it, he writes “We want genocide to have begun and ended with nazism....That is what is most comforting.” 

8. If you'd rather read something lighter, try something by Barbara Neely, the author of the wonderful mystery series featuring Blanche White. This article from Lit Hub's "Crime Reads" newsletter explains her activist history and influence on a younger generation of Black women mystery writers.  

9. If you want a mix of foreign policy commentary with genre fiction, you cannot do better than John Le Carre, who, like Neely, died in 2020. He certainly wrote plenty of books to choose from. 

10. The last author whose work I've read and who I highly recommend in this category is the most recently deceased, Maryse Conde who died just last month. Her book I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, is one that I taught when I was still teaching literature classes. You can read Lit Hub's profile of her at the link above.

11. Speaking of Lit Hub, I suggest reviewing their annual summaries of notable literary deaths I found out more about recently-deceased Syrian author, Khaled Khalifa by reviewing those lists this morning. 

Academic Reading Challenge Recommendations: Fiction about Non-Human Animals

 I've been too busy to do a recommendation post for a while, but here I am again wtih recommendations for category 12:  A book of fiction in which a non-human animal is a major character, or in which non-human animals feature significantly in the plot. 

At first I didn't think there would be that many books that would fit this category, but then I realized that there's so much to choose from in this category. There are many books written from an animal's point of view, books about alien animal species, books in which animals figure significantly without being central characters, and science-fiction books about "uplifted animals" who have been genetically modified to have human-like intelligence. 

I got some excellent suggestions for this category from members of the reading challenge Facebook group, as well as a new "bookish" social group that a friend of mine has created for his friends that like to read and talk about books without being members of a regular book club. It also just so happens that the science fiction book club that I'm in chose to read a book about uplifted animals for our March meeting, so I got some ideas from that list of options as well. 

This post's theme-song is Foals' "Providence" 

 

1. One of my favorite books,and one of the first to be recommended by a member of the challenge facebook group was the science-fiction book, Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. This book began a series and all of it includes significant animal characters, so any of them could count. VanderMeer's interest in animals and ecology would also make some of his other writings work for this challenge, including the excellent Southern Reach trilogy.  

2. Another alien-animal series begins with Nicky Drayden's book Escaping Exodus which includes an organic space-ship. It comes recommended by another challenge participant. The same member of the group also recommends The Last Animal, which she described as addressing a number of fascinating issues such as cloning, research ethics, grief, and sexism. 

3, Because I was reading their review of Borne, Publisher's Weekly's algorithm just suggested this forthcoming book by Julia Phillips, author of The Disappearing Earth. If you can wait until June to read this category, why not try out Bear, which sounds like it's influenced both by ecology and fairy tales. 

4. Also from the facebook group, comes a recommendation for Bernard Malamud's God's Grace which, like some of the others listed here is also a dystopian novel, and according to the challenge participant "gets weird." 

5. I thought of this entire category because I recently stumbled across the book Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth. It's not written from an animal point of view, at least as far as I know, but the whole thing is about a heist by two egg auditors to "steal a million chickens in the middle of the night." I bought it because the cover caught my eye and then the description made it sound like a lot of fun. 

6. There are many classics written from the point of view of animals, and any of them would be great for this category. Consider, for example Watership Down, Animal Farm, Call of the Wild and White Fang; Charlotte's Web, the Metamorphosis paired with lesser-works by Kafka, such as "Josephine the Mouse Singer." There are many children's books in this category, including the Black Stallion books, or, more recently, the huge "warrior cats" series. Just remember that challenge books should be about 200 pages long, so you might need to read a couple to fill the category. 

7. The most classic work in the "uplifted animal" sub-genre is Planet of the Apes, which began as a book in French in 1963. Other works to consider in this category, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series, which features a terraformed planet populated by accidentally uplifted spiders and ants, Despite being pretty horrifying as a concept, this book, which I'm currently reading for the SF book club I mentioned, is really good. Some other good uplifted animal books you might consider are Clifford Simak's City, in which dogs narrate the end of human civilization,  Lawrence Schoen's Barsk; The Elephant's Graveyard, and Robert Repino's Mort(e): War With No Name, featuring a house-cat turned assassin.   

8. Many of the members of the bookish club recently read the short novel, Open Throat written from the point of view of a mountain lion in the Hollywood Hills, which is part of this year's Tournament of Books. They really, really liked it, finding the animal's point of view narrative very interestingly non-human.

9. I've already mentioned this book in my recommendations of Nobel Prize winners, but Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is another great book in which animals feature significantly in the plot without being point-of-view characters. 

10. Sigrid Nunez's The Friend is another non-science fiction work in which an animal figures significantly in the plot. This book is as much about relationships among humans as it is about animals, but it explores the importance of animal companions to humans.

I think I'll stop there, but if you find something else that looks good, feel free to mention it in the comments. 

Academic Reading Challenge Recommendations: Books About Conspiracy Theories or Conspiracism

 

Category ten this year is a “book about conspiracies or conspiracism.”  Because of the research I’ve been doing on opposition to the far-right, this is one category where I’ve read enough to make some general observations about the scholarship.  It’s also a category in which new books, and new editions of old books come out at a fast clip, so there’s just a ridiculous amount to choose from. As usual, I’m including a mix of journalistic and more academic works, though I’ve only included one novel.

My general observation about scholarship on conspiracy theory is that it’s closely tied to scholarship on populism, and thus tends to be divided in similar ways to that scholarship. The books that come to the quickest and easiest condemnations of conspiracy theory are by defenders of liberal democratic institutions who find both left and right populisms to be dangerous to liberal democracy. Richard Hofstadter’s Paranoid Style in American Politics, while written mostly in opposition to right-wing populism, also identifies left populism as paranoid, and is the foundational work for most liberal critics of conspiracy theory. Frederic Jameson’s description of conspiracy theory as a “poor person’s cognitive mapping” is a Marxist analysis similar to Ferdinand Kronawetter's description of anti-Semitism as the “socialism of fools" (this phrase is often attributed to August Bebel). Jameson rejects conspiracy theories while also advocating for left critique of liberal capitalism. Since the 1990s, academic analyses of conspiracy theories have largely aligned either with one of these two central arguments or have been written against them. Those scholars influenced by post-modern theory oppose Hofstadter thesis for its own defense of establishment common sense and Jameson’s for what they see as “dismissal” of popular anti-establishment ideas and over-zealous rationalism. I would call these recent critics of anti-conspiracy theory writers as more populist than leftist as they are defending conspiracy theorizing on the basis that it represents an “anti-establishment” position, while depicting even left critics of conspiracy theory as aligned with various “authorities.” They argue for the radical potential in conspiracy theory, sometimes by pointing out that “real conspiracies” do exist.

 My own view is that left scholars accommodate conspiracy theory and repudiate efforts to disprove or debunk them at our peril. Conspiracy theory may be understandably anti-establishment and even exhilarating, but that’s what makes it more dangerous than more traditional conservative politics. The problem is not that it is “pseudo-conservative,” to use Richard Hofstadter’s term, so much as it is “pseudo-left.”  The left populist academic effort to salvage conspiracy theory for as imanent radicalism fails to account for right-wing populism. I think this blindness to right-wing anti-establishment discourse is related to this group's general emphasis on opposing liberalism (and sometimes Marxism) as more hegemonic than they are. Their identification of liberal and left enemies as the most important ones means that they have a relatively simple understanding of right-wing politics. This also means that their analyses of fascism are similarly wrong-headed. 

The conceptual battle-lines in this case are not between liberalism and populism but between Marxism and populism. Populism is not “almost” Marxism or on the way there, but this idea causes some leftist writers on this issue to be overly charitable to conspiracy theorizing for its anti-liberalism. Rather than leading to more leftist positions eventually, conspiratorial understandings of power may be helpful in explaining why someone who once seemed to be on the left - say, Tom Watson in the 1890s - could become such a vicious right-wing demagogue such a short time later. The answer may be that the person did not “switch” from the left to the right at all, but was the same all along – a populist who aligned with the left on some issues, but with the right on many others. Their underlying analysis was never truly anti-capitalist in most cases, but against specific capitalists, or monopolies, or particular branches of capitalism. Close-reading of these popular "left" thinkers who later shifted right would likely real a consistency in their thinking over time. We don't always see it because many of us just “want to believe” that socialist analysis is more prevalent in popular culture than it is. But, like specific anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories in general represent “the socialism of fools.”

 Conspiracy theories themselves will more often lead to right-wing xenophobia and anti-Semitism than to leftist analysis of power. Regardless of whether the theory is held on the right or the left, conspiracy theory always leads to an impoverished account of how power works, and thus leads to bad political strategies, if not outright right-wing xenophobia. My point here is not that there are no left populists or that left populists couldn’t change over time and develop better analysis, but that there’s no point in protecting that bad analysis, as if a left critique would somehow hurt the left, or align with power, or as if conspiracy theory were a kind of necessary step on the way to radicalization instead of a problem to be solved.

And with that, here are my recommendations for category 10:

 

1. Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger was the blockbuster in this category for 2023. It’s the most personal of her books, beginning with her experiences of being confused with Naomi Wolff, the former feminist who became an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and now regularly appears on Steve Bannon’s show. This book will be especially interesting for anyone interested in public people (such as Klein’s former colleagues Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, who are never mentioned in this book) who have made what seem turns from left to right in recent years.  She draws on Quinn Slobodian’s work on what is called “diagonalism” in Germany to explain this phenomenon. Klein’s statement that conspiracy theorists “get the feelings right but he facts wrong,” is a pithy and helpful framing of what goes wrong with conspiracy theories.

2. A related book, which I haven’t read, but know a lot about because I listen to their podcast regularly is Derek Beres, Matthew Remski’s and Julian Walker’s Conspirituality: How New-Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat. The podcast and the book try to explain how health and wellness influencers became increasingly conspiratorial around the Covid-19 pandemic. This book will likely be the best one to read if you are interested in anti-vax politics or Yoga cults, or trying to figure out how legitimate critiques of “big pharma” can go awry.

3. One of the most frequently cited academics on the phenomenon of “conspiracism,” and included in the notes of many journalists’ accounts is Joseph Uscinski, who has written a number of books on conspiracy theories for a variety of audiences. The shortest and most accessible of these is probably Conspiracy Theories: A Primer. He’s also the editor of a very big (500+ pp) collection called Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them that provides a good survey of differing academic arguments about conspiracy theory, from the Hofstadter supporters to the populist critics of “conspiracy panic.” As with most anthologies, the quality of these pieces varies, but this is a decent book for getting a sense of how social scientists in general write about conspiracy theory and belief. Uscinski’s own most controversial claims are that conspiratorial thinking exists equally on the left and right, and that the amount of conspiracy theorizing hasn’t changed in the last few years. He bases these claims on polls that he’s conducted – so everything rests on whether his polls are reliable.

4. Katheryn Olmstead’s Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 is another academic book that has become nearly canonical in scholarship on conspiracy theory. Her general argument is that conspiracy theories by lay-people are related to the existence of real conspiracies and deceptions by people in power, so much of her book cites both the conspiratorial language of the government itself and the existence of actual conspiracies that have justified people’s paranoia.  This book is limited by its focus on the United States and to my view, is overly populist in its approach. That said, it’s still very much worth reading. The book was originally published in 2009, but the new anniversary edition (2019) includes a chapter on the 2016 election, and I’d be curious to see whether Olmstead has become less sanguine about conspiratorial thinking in recent years.

This week's theme song is Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" 

5. Political scientists Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum’s A Lot of People Are Saying: the New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy offers a counter-point to Uscinski’s argument that conspiracism exists equally on the left and right and makes the argument that conspiracy thinking is more common, and more dangerous than ever, on the far right. Although it is written by two political scientists, this is a short and punchy little book written for a popular audience. I haven’t read it, but it’s in my TBR pile right now.

5. Much denser is Thomas Milan Korda’s . Conspriacy of Conspiracies: How Delusions Have Overrun America. He also takes the position that conspiracy theories are more a characteristic of right-wing thought, adopting Richard Hofstadter’s concept of “pseudo-conservatism” in his introduction. Korda’s is the first major historical account of American conspiracy theories by an academic since Olmstead’s. He’s not a historian, but a political scientist, and I haven't read this, but he seems to fall on the more liberal, anti-populist side, winning praise from Michael Barkun.

6. While it’s not entirely about conspiracy theories, I’m including Peter Pomerantsev’s book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible on this list because of how well it explains the rise of popular conspiracism in Russia, given the prominence of Russian disinformation efforts internationally. This book is based on the author’s work at Russian television station in the 1990s and connects conspiracism and the Russian government’s use of media. Pomerantsev has also written a new book called This is Not Propaganda – you can hear him talk about it with Joey Ayoub on his podcast, The Fire These Times

7. If you want to understand both the origins of Alex Jones’s infamous theory that the Sandy Hook preschool shooting was a “false flag” and how that affected the families of children killed there, read Elizabeth Williamson’s Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy

9. Journalist Anna Merlan’s Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and their Surprising Rise to Power is an informative, deftly written, and entertaining overview of recent conspiracy theories, beginning with 9/11 conspiracy theories and including discussions of Seth Rich theories, Pizzagate, Sandyhook, anti-vax theories, and UFOs.  Merlan also includes a chapter on “Russiagate.” The book came out in 2019, so it doesn’t include anything about covid-19 or the 2020 election, but it’s got a good general analysis of Trump’s uses of conspiracy theories and the broad appeal of conspiratorial thinking.

10. Mike Rothschild’s The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, a Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything was the first of a handful of left reporters’ books on QAnon to come out. It’s a good guide to understanding the phenomenon and its basic history on the internet. Although Rothschild does seek to identify the main people driving the “Q” movement, he is also interested in the rank and file members and how they come to believe in these bizarre theories. He writes about people who “have fallen down the rabbit hole” with sympathy and gives advice to readers who are seeking to help relative and friends leave the “Q” cult.  He continues to be interested in conspiracism’s impact in society. His new book Jewish Space Lasers is about the Rothschild family and conspiracy theories about them. (As he says in his by-lines, he’s no relation).  

11. Kelly Weill’ s Off the Edge: Flat-Earthers, Conspiracy Culture and Why People Will Believe Anything is a journalists’ account of Flat-Earth conspiracy theories. This book is super interesting as an exploration of how conspiratorial thinking works, how communities are built around conspiracy beliefs, and how the internet works to spread even the most bizarre conspiracy theories. Weill also writes with practical goals, and includes a discussion of various debunking techniques and methods that every day people can use to combat conspiracism.

12. Graphic novel champion and comic writer and artist, Will Eisner’s last book was his comic history of the creation and circulation of the infamous forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s called simply, The Plot It’s a really remarkable achievement in graphic story-telling and includes a comprehensive bibliography and notes, as well as introduction by Umberto Eco.

13. Of all the fictional accounts of conspiracy theories, I most recommend Umberto Eco’s Foucault's Pendulum. Eco has himself been interested in the problems of conspiracy theory and has written extensively about fascism in culture, particularly in response to the rise of the European New Right. I read this book over 30 years ago, in between my shifts as a linecook, but I remember it as being something between a wild romp and a philosophical exercise.