Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

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Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

3.51 of 5 stars 3.51 · rating details · 702 ratings · 168 reviews

Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere - from Pearl Harbour to 9/11, from the assassination of Kennedy to the death of Diana. Bookshop shelves threaten to collapse under the weight of texts devoted to proving myriad conspiracy theories true, while even quality newspapers and serious TV channels are prepared to give them credence.

For David Aaron...more

Hardcover, 368 pages

Published May 7th 2009 by Jonathan Cape (first published January 1st 2009)

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Jun 28, 2012 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-culture-innit, history-will-teach-us-nothing

THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF WALMART

OR, IF EVERYBODY’S IN ON IT, WHY HAVEN’T THEY ASKED ME?

Our text for today is :

Things only appear random because you're standing TOO CLOSE!

Let's cut to the chase here. Conspiracies are real. A trade union is a conspiracy against the rat-bastard capitalist running dogs who run big business. The capitalist running dogs in turn conspire against the honest workers to screw them out of every penny and when they're coughing and flopping about from emphysema, sack e...more

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Jul 07, 2010 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Yesterday morning my neighbor directly across the street committed suicide. Well, her body was discovered yesterday; the suicide took place on July 4th. So, 40 yards from my house, and 20 yards from where my kids and I were lighting fireworks in the street, laughing, our neighbor was alone, in her car, idling a full tank of gas all the way to empty in her sealed garage. We didn’t notice any noise, no gas fumes escaping from the cracks around the door, oblivious to the world, nothing else out of...more

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Jun 28, 2012 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, history, vast-conspiracy

NASA landing a man on the moon was one of the biggest engineering challenges ever taken on. It involved thousands of people and billions of dollars. It was documented by countless still pictures, hours of film, warehouses full of paperwork and scientific data. And some people will tell you that it never happened. Because they use bad science and faulty assumptions to say that it’s far more likely that the U.S. pulled off the most elaborate lie in history rather than that that we actually went to...more NASA landing a man on the moon was one of the biggest engineering challenges ever taken on. It involved thousands of people and billions of dollars. It was documented by countless still pictures, hours of film, warehouses full of paperwork and scientific data. And some people will tell you that it never happened. Because they use bad science and faulty assumptions to say that it’s far more likely that the U.S. pulled off the most elaborate lie in history rather than that that we actually went to the moon. (And if you want to argue about it, I’ll just refer you to the Mythbusters moon hoax episode or the Bad Astronomy web site.)

For some reason, people would rather believe that Princess Di was whacked in an elaborate conspiracy rather than admit that her driver was drunk and speeding recklessly to get away from paparazzi, and she wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Or that JFK was the victim of the CIA/Mafia/Soviet/Cuban/military-industrial-complex plot to kill him instead of just having bad luck that his motorcade route went by the workplace of a pathetic loser who couldn’t stand being a nobody. Or that the story behind The Da Vinci Code is real even though the French hoaxsters who duped the idiots who wrote the book that Dan Brown got the idea from confessed years ago that they made the whole thing up.

Does it matter that a fair percentage of the population at any given time thinks that Marilyn Monroe was murdered or that Roosevelt let the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor to get the U.S. into World War II?

Yes, it does. Why? Because once upon a time, a political allegory about Napleon III got rewritten and released as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by a Russian at the turn of the century who claimed it was the ‘true’ plan the Jews use to wreck and control the civilization. After World War I when everyone was trying to figure out a way to avoid admitting responsibility for what they just did, it got widely distributed, and the Jews instantly got scapegoated for the war and everything else going wrong in the world. It got so much mainstream credence after World War I that legitimate newspapers discussed it and people like Henry Ford helped spread it even after it had been debunked. And Adolf Hitler believed it and he told his pals about it. They used it as a key point of their government and things ended badly for several million people. It’s still around though, especially in the Arabic world where it’s usually taught in schools.

The book does a great job in showing how the conspiracy theory has become so pervasive that it’s become mainstream. There is no legitimate evidence that Bill Clinton had Vince Foster killed or that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. or that Bush orchestrated 9/11. Yet all of these things have been treated as legitimate news items or fact because pseudo science, bad research and reckless speculation have led to a culture where people will believe almost anything except the truth.(less)

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Apr 24, 2011 Phil rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A great book destroyed by a terrible recording. The narrator commits a major faux pas in non-fiction audiobook recording: he tries to do character voices. He has a great reading voice, but every time there is a quote, he throws on a voice. Problem: every Russian sounds like Boris Badenov, every French person sounds like Pepe Le Pew, every American sounds like a gangster (even FDR!) and don't get me started on the Japanese! Oh, christ! It's like an old Fu Manchu movie. Terrible. So distracting.

St...more

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Aug 09, 2009 Ascexis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction, psychology, conspiracy

I'm nearly at the end of the book -- some three pages in fact, having just looked -- and ... I don't know.

The author clearly has a very strong sense of Fact and Not!Fact. He spends a lot of time reviewing how Not!Facts get treated as facts, and diagramming the way conspiracy theories develop, interlock, and support each others lies -- the same names over and over.

And yet. If he does it in the last three pages, then it's more than I'm expecting. I'll do him the credit of assuming he wants you to...more I'm nearly at the end of the book -- some three pages in fact, having just looked -- and ... I don't know.

The author clearly has a very strong sense of Fact and Not!Fact. He spends a lot of time reviewing how Not!Facts get treated as facts, and diagramming the way conspiracy theories develop, interlock, and support each others lies -- the same names over and over.

And yet. If he does it in the last three pages, then it's more than I'm expecting. I'll do him the credit of assuming he wants you to draw your own conclusions. And so: human beings crave the illusion of order and narrative structure. The first thing we do out of any event is turn it into a narrative -- beginning, middle, end. Conspiracy theories save us from the terrible fear that there is no one in charge. We're all just making it up as we go along. Control is an illusion. Shit happens because we don't stop it in time,a nd we're not perfect.

It struck me very much, and I don't know how much of this was Aaronovitch's framing, that conspiracy theories are a way of letting yourself believe someone's in charge; there *is* a plan; you *can* fight against the things you fear.

Of course, it's a lie. Life doesn't come in narratives; people do things that make no sense. No one is omniscient and endowed with precognition. That hindsight is always 20/20. it's much easier to pick out the significant stuff once it's all over and you can decide which bits *were* the significant stuff.

It falls in closely with something that I've taken from Pratchett, on Pan Narrans -- the storytelling ape. We construct stories to make reality look manageable. They are lies, and we implicitly understand they are lies: incomplete and inaccurate. And as long as we remember that they are lies that are based on facts, and not lies based on lies, they are a useful shorthand. Right up until someone takes a French satire about Napoleon III and turns it into the Protocols of Zion, and causes untold grief, pain and death thereby.

It made fascinating reading, but the author didn't take the book where I expected him to. A little heavy going, repetitive in places, and his anecdotes re heavyhanded and unnecessary (possibly since I buy the basic premise that bright people can be gullible and credulous, given the right topic), and he starts losing his grip on his contempt every now and again. But interesting. And of course, one is free to draw ones own conclusions.

ETA: The last three pages *did* go into the tendency of the human mind to see patterns and construct narrative. I still think he'd have done better to pull the thread out sooner, and thereby strengthen the premise by illustrating his point rather than lining up all the illustrations and going: see what I mean?(less)

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Apr 21, 2010 Anita Dalton rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, conspiracy-theory

I liked this book but not for the reasons I purchased it. As someone who has spent a lot of time wallowing in conspiracy at different times in my life, there was little new for me in this book (though this is not to say there was not some content unfamiliar to me – there was and it was fascinating). Moreover, this book is more a debunking attempt than really a look at how conspiracy theory has shaped modern history for the average person. No one can walk away from this book and feel that any of...more

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Feb 25, 2012 Kevin Cecil rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, male-author, skepticism

My Conspiracy Theory: Every morning Alex Jones sticks his head up his own ass and farts delusions into his mouth. Mr. Jones then transmits his Delusional Fart Breath (DFB) into the atmosphere via dull, nonsensical, and paranoid speeches, which are spread to the general population via youtube videos and/or radiowaves.

Be advised: DFB is a contagious airborn toxin which can infect anyone who sees patterns in nothing (and/or everything), and likes to think they know more than the rest of the blind...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Peter rated it 2 of 5 stars

Ohhh how much do I envy Mr. Aaronovitch, for he lives in almost perfect world, where there is no place for conspiracies, only for lonely nuts, he is obviously firm believer in honesty of all governments and right now, he is probably sitting in his english garden having five o tea, half dreaming about all the good that awaits him tomorrow.

So, aforementioned gentleman decided to educate us, unworthy independent thinkers, and put us on the right path /pun wholly intended/. Main point of his elabor...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Chris Witt rated it 3 of 5 stars

Genuinely enjoyed, but that's probably because every time I have heard any of the following things, my eyes roll...

* Bush knew about 9/11 and let it happen. (Or even planned it.)
* Obama is not born here.
* Clinton had lots of people killed.
* Oswald was not capable of killing Kennedy single-handedly.
* The government created AIDS to get rid of black people.
* The world is run by a small group of Jewish bankers.

And I have been confronted by people who sincerely believe every one of those things in th...more

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Oct 23, 2012 Todd rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Snagged this on the discount table at the Mountain View Books Inc because it had been on my Amazon wish list for a while.

Originally I was skeptical of a book by a journalist about conspiracies, expecting entire chapters on topics like the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe or the secret of Coke. But Mr. Aaronovitch is from the UK and they take mass delusions a tad bit more seriously over there.

To wit: The first chapter is about the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, something I had heard about but didn't r...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Jerry rated it 4 of 5 stars

David Aaronovitch is one of the few writers who, when I see their name on a newspaper article, will consciously ignore it. I have never been comfortable with either his style or approach. However, not being a great believer in conspiracies (and seemingly being in the minority in this), I bought the book.

I have just finished it and I was impressed. He starts off from a position that I sympathise with - he was working with someone who believed the moon landings were faked - and that lead him to w...more David Aaronovitch is one of the few writers who, when I see their name on a newspaper article, will consciously ignore it. I have never been comfortable with either his style or approach. However, not being a great believer in conspiracies (and seemingly being in the minority in this), I bought the book.

I have just finished it and I was impressed. He starts off from a position that I sympathise with - he was working with someone who believed the moon landings were faked - and that lead him to write the book. He goes through all of the well known conspiracies such as 9/11, Princess Diana, JFK, Obama isn't American etc etc, and demolishes them all fact by fact. As a non-believer, this wasn't a surprise for me but none the less satisfying to see each theory examined piece by piece and disproved.

The point he then goes on to make is that these conspiracies, far from being harmless fun, can cause enormous damage. Perhaps the best example of this for me was concerning "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". This particular conspiracy came about in pre Communist Russia, when some Napoleonic era literature was plagiarised and turned into a supposed tale of how the Jews were about to rule the world. The point was that it provided a basis for the Tsarist authorities to persecute the Jewish community who were actively supporting the Bolsheviks. However, that false document remained in circulation throughout the 20th century. Aaronovitch's point is that it might have influenced Hitler et al, which is pure speculation and easily dismissed as such. But when he demonstrates that sections of "The Protocols" are actually quoted in Hamas' constitution, I began to understand what he was getting at .

In the conclusion to the book, he asks why, regardless of fact, conspiracies are so popular. He provides some basis for the often given explanation; the world is big and scary and nasty things happen. These are random, but some people can't accept that and need to put a pattern on events. And if there is a pattern - a conspiracy by big powerful concerns - then that is more easy to accept than the randomness.

Excellent book, well worth the read.

JJH Dubai March 2012(less)

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Jul 25, 2011 Matthew Kresal rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Voodoo Histories is an interesting book on conspiracy theories to say the very least. It was quite an eye opener, even for someone who has read quite a bit on conspiracy theories, though I don't believe most of them and have changed my views on a couple of them as a result of reading this. The only thing not convincing is the debunking of JFK assassination conspiracy theories which get nowhere the same amount of spent on them as many of the other theories in the book. Writer David Aaronovitch no...more

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Jul 21, 2011 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Having spent some time in my working life dealing with endless enquiries relating to the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, this book struck a chord with me.

Aaronovitch is especially good in driving home what is often the easiest way to demolish many conspiracy theories which is to ask "What would it mean for this conspiracy theory to be true?" faking the moon landings sufficiently convincingly is probably more difficult than actually landing on the moon, and some of the barmy ideas of th...more

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Jul 03, 2011 I.J. Black rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: skepticism

A great introduction to the business of debunking conspiracy theories. Having attended David Aaronovitch's talk on the subject at GMSS, I was curious to read the book behind it. Aaronovitch has created a useful synthesis of major conspiracy theories of the twentieth and 21st centuries, from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to 9/11. He finishes with an interesting discussion on the reasons why conspiracy theories have become so prevalent recently, who and why we believe in them.

The work is tho...more

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Feb 09, 2011 JenniferRuth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I guess we have all experienced a moment when someone you thought was quite a rational and sensible person suddenly espouses belief in a conspiracy theory, It might be about the 1969 moon landings or the events of 9/11 or global warming being a myth but whatever it is it nearly always implausible. If you point out the holes and impracticalities and the lack of cui bono in these theories you will often find yourself derided as being "close-minded" at best and "brain-washed" at worst. You may begi...more I guess we have all experienced a moment when someone you thought was quite a rational and sensible person suddenly espouses belief in a conspiracy theory, It might be about the 1969 moon landings or the events of 9/11 or global warming being a myth but whatever it is it nearly always implausible. If you point out the holes and impracticalities and the lack of cui bono in these theories you will often find yourself derided as being "close-minded" at best and "brain-washed" at worst. You may begin to wonder, what is it that makes otherwise sensible, educated people believe in the most ridiculous absurdities. If so, this book is for you.

Aaronovitch does a great job of dissecting a whole range of conspiracy theories. He doesn't focus just on evidence-based scepticism to break the theories apart but also spends a considerable amount of time looking into how and why conspiracy theories arise. I felt that this was far more interesting in dismissing the theories themselves. It is pretty easy to disprove most conspiracy theories because they rely on flimsy or twisted evidence, assumptions and vague feelings of how things "might have happened" - it has always seemed to me that people believe in these theories simply because they make sense to them personally. Often people will endorse one fanciful theory whilst dismissing others as crack-pot. What makes people have the ability to think rationally about one set of theories yet buy whole-heartedly into others? Aaronovitch tackles this very question quite thoroughly.

The question is, does it matter if people believe in easily falsifiable untruths? Do conspiracies have an effect on politics? Aaronovitch says yes. Specificially, he says "the belief in conspiracy theories is harmful in itself. It distorts our view of history and therefore of the present and - if widespread enough - leads to disastrous decisions." This is the core of the book and is argued very well.

The only place where the book falls down is in the conclusion. In attempting to pin down why people become so attached to conspiracy theories Aaronovitch dismisses the idea that sometimes a theory may represent a distrust of authority that is not entirely misplaced. There is a theory that the American government weakened levees in predominantly black areas before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Such a conspiracy would have to include people in local, state and federal government - all of whom supposedly would be rabid racists with no conscious. Yet, it is interesting to look at why such a theory should come about. The American south does have a horrible history of racist oppression that has not entirely disappeared and institutional racism is still rife the world over. Therefore it does make some sense that there is a mistrust of officials would play a part in forming such conspiracy theories. Aaronovitch seems to dismiss this possibility and therefore almost comes across as dismissing racism itself as a conspiracy theory! I feel sure that this is not exactly what he meant but I felt that this angle deserved a deeper analysis than Aaronovitch gave it. Many other conspiracy theories are linked to a deep distrust of those in authority - sometimes with merit and sometimes not. I think another chapter (or even a book!) could be written on how we could distinguish between when a distrust has basis in reality and when it does not.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is on the side of rationality and reality. It is not a difficult read and Aaronovitch is very entertaining. The only thing that this book does not provide is a deeper analysis of the underlying emotions running through society that lead to such theories being formed. However, in term of factual and historical analysis this book is informative and a breath of fresh air. (less)

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Jul 26, 2010 Nicola rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had a friend go off the deep end with his conspiracy theories. He would spend half the night following hyperlinks, say that he couldn't even tell me about all the things he knows, point out all the unmarked cars in our small town, build his bunker in the woods, and worry about all the people photographing him. This wouldn't have necessarily ended our friendship completely--there was room for fascination--but because he was so pretentious about all the conspiracies he was privy to, it was reall...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Marcia rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, read-on-kindle

This was an extremely interesting and insightful read. Aaronovitch examines a multitude of conspiracy theories, their believers, and the effect these fringe ideas have on politics, history, and the general population. He focuses mostly on US and Britain, with some forays into Western Europe. He examines it all with a skeptical eye, which works for me, because when it comes to conspiracies I am a HUGE skeptic, but for those with a less skeptic mindset, he may be biased, in that he believes that v...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Michael Johnston rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A very interesting read. Aaronovitch covers a host of famous "conspiracy theories" from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to the Kennedy assassination and Pearl Harbor (Roosevelt did it - didn't you know?). The book not only discusses the most common conspiracy theories (and debunks them), but also discusses how conspiracy theories get started and why people have a need to believe in them. I am not a conspiracy theorist and have always been astonished by the weirdness of such theories and how...more

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Feb 17, 2011 Stephen Hayes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: our-books, society

It is said that there are two main theories of history: the conspiracy theory and the cock-up theory. In this book the author examines some of the conspiracy theories of the last century or so, and comprehensively debunks them.

But debunking and refuting conspiracy theories is not the main purpose of the book. It rather shows that whether or not there are conspiracies, beliefs in conspiracy theories often do more to shape history than the conspiracies the theorists believe in. An example is the...more

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Apr 19, 2012 Holden Attradies rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, history, non-fiction, skeptics-shelf

An amazing listen. This was my second time through the book and I actually got the bug to re-listen while reading Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs: The World's Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved, particularly the awful chapter in that on Marylin Monroe. The chapter on her in here was incredibly in depth and seems to get everything right from everything else I've ever read.

Any ways, the book is a really interesting read. I don't buy into conspiracies at all (although when I was younger I did a ta...more

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Mar 21, 2010 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

After reading the utter crap that was 1421 The Year China Discovered America, this book seemed to be just what the doctor ordered. Aaronovitch is a British journalist who doesn't buy into conspiracy theories. Here, he outlines some of the bigger ones from the past 100 years or so, starting with the Protocols of Zion and ending with the Birther movement. He also includes two big ones from Britain, and it says a lot about the power of these ideas that the average American, even one who considers h...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Patrick Sprunger rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-nonfiction, read-in-2010

I have no idea how David Aaronovitch would describe the "role of conspiracy theory in shaping modern history." The author spends such an inordinate amount of time commenting on how stupid various conspiracies actually are that he never quite gets around to his thesis.*

Of course, Aaronovitch isn't wrong. Conspiracy theories - from CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination, British royal family orchestration of Diana's death, President Bush's war mongering desire to stage 9/11, to the "birther"...more I have no idea how David Aaronovitch would describe the "role of conspiracy theory in shaping modern history." The author spends such an inordinate amount of time commenting on how stupid various conspiracies actually are that he never quite gets around to his thesis.*

Of course, Aaronovitch isn't wrong. Conspiracy theories - from CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination, British royal family orchestration of Diana's death, President Bush's war mongering desire to stage 9/11, to the "birther" movement that (continues to) insist President Obama isn't a US citizen - are usually pretty stupid. They've become so ubiquitous through film and screen, the political media, and sheer persistence that we sometimes fail to note exactly why they are so stupid, even when they are constant nuisance. I expected the author to eventually comment on something like that.

I also wondered what the first conspiracy theory might be, and if the line between it to the present is continuous. But, nope. No commentary about that either.

Having modified my expectations when I realized that Mr. Aaronovitch had abandoned his thesis, I started to wonder if the author had at least written a good dismissal of his cherry-picked examples. For a while, it was sort of hard to tell. Being that half of his examples are British conspiracies with little play in the American press, I couldn't tell if the many tangents explored contributed to or detracted from the analysis. When he made it to recent American conspiracies (the 9/11 "Truth movement" and the "birther" crusade), it became clear the tangents are signs of disorganization or ineptitude. At the very least, Aaronovitch has a preference for anachronism, constantly beginning with something recent and fresh and ending with something moldering and obscure. One can (and should) demonstrate the constancy of agents provocateur embellishing White Water and the Clinton impeachment hearings through the "I'm just asking" Iagoism of the "birthers." The logical order is to handle Clinton first, then proceed to Obama. Aaronovitch writes history from the perspective of Merlin.

The reader who wants a good laugh at the stupidity of others will enjoy the multifarious rants. The reader interested in understanding why conspiracy theories flourish and what effect they have on culture has a lot of raw data to contend with here. Voodoo Histories is a good compendium of crazy shit. Unfortunately, its discipline is not significantly elevated above its source to capture the moral authority needed to back up its vulgar, if commonsensical conclusions.

*To be fair, Aaronovitch does eventually get the question of "why," dedicating about three pages (or 0.8% of the total manuscript) to the understanding (what he compiles from other scholars is fascinating). He never quite explores the conspiracy theory's "role" in shaping history, though.(less)

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Sep 04, 2011 Tyler Grant rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

Conspiracy theories are rampant these days. What is it about people that they believe some of this stuff? Aaronovitch doesn't have a very satisfactory answer. The book is better as a overview of some of the biggest conspiracy theories out there: JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Di, 9/11, plus some other earlier like Jews taking over the world, etc, etc, etc. The book can't address every detail of every conspiracy theory. There have been 100's of books written about the JFK assassination after all....more

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Oct 20, 2010 Brian S. Wise rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.5 stars. “Voodoo Histories” is a valuable read; mostly smart and well written. Though Aaronovitch lost me here and there in the middle chapters, his 9/11 chapter is especially worth reading. My one true disappointment came late in the book when, while covering Birthers and Clinton era conspiracies, he writes the following:

“But the Birther charge has been led by Joseph Farah at WND, Christopher Ruddy at NewsMax, and by Accuracy in Media, making use of the Internet and right-wing radio and cable...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Hans De Jonge rated it 1 of 5 stars

Terrible bad book full of lies.
Book based upon a theory about everything that really has happened in history is an incident. David Aaronovitch is a notorious Zionist who sees every factual argument about a Jewish conspiracy as an attempt victimizing and attacking Israel. Mary Rizzo has written on Twitter a humorist critique about all the publications of David Aaronovitch in Jewish Times Online: "From Aggression to Victim-hood: David Aaronovitch" (or How the Mighty Fall) See Below
Almost everybody...more

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Nov 14, 2010 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I was provoked into reading this by Paul Dorby - not directly, it was by his espousing of the view that he felt 9/11 could well have been a conspiracy constructed by the Bush administartion. Calm down son, I felt like saying, but as the book points out, the trouble is that this argument is met with a similar response unless you sit down and coldly examine the evidence and facts. Plus also apply some common sense, not the least of which is just how many people would have to be involved in coverin...more

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Jan 10, 2012 Nick Sweeney rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love a good old conspiracy theory, so probably shouldn't have read this book. I wouldn't have, either, but I bought it as a present for somebody who already had it, so was stuck with it. David Aaronovitch, a journalist whose work I really like, is eloquent in demolishing a lot of the theories that people like me tend to cling to. He identifies this with a wish to believe that there are dark forces out there, rather than a belief in the mundane, that people fuck up, get careless, that totally r...more I love a good old conspiracy theory, so probably shouldn't have read this book. I wouldn't have, either, but I bought it as a present for somebody who already had it, so was stuck with it. David Aaronovitch, a journalist whose work I really like, is eloquent in demolishing a lot of the theories that people like me tend to cling to. He identifies this with a wish to believe that there are dark forces out there, rather than a belief in the mundane, that people fuck up, get careless, that totally random events just sweep in to upset the best-laid plans. It seems that we prefer the outlandish to the everyday when things go wrong; it's easier for Americans to hint at unstoppable forces in wide-ranging conspiracies when JFK was shot, rather than just admit that having a Catholic president ride around in an open-topped car was a really stupid idea that laid him - and his whole generation and generations to come - low. Aaronovitch shows us that there had always been plenty of assassination attempts on presidents, so it wasn't as if shooting the president was some weird idea totally out of left field. So, while being, mostly, convinced by Aaronovitch's arguments, I'm still determined to enjoy Oliver Stone's JFK, with its cast of conspirators - and I still don't quite believe in that magic bullet. The one argument of the author's that I wasn't convinced by is the case of the Stalinist show trials of the late 1930s. He thinks it's absurd to believe that the defendants - made to confess to the wildest crimes, from collaboration with the Nazis to sabotaging factories to putting grit into motorbike engines - must have been made to rehearse their testimony for months before it was played out in court; he can't conceive of that notion. I believe they were. Stalin and his police chiefs (a grisly succession through Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria) were obsessive about these things - they were writing the history, after all, and, like many obsessives, lost all sight of plausiblity. There is a telling scene in a book that comes elsewhere in these reviews of mine, David Peace's Red Riding 1974, in which a character undergoes what can only be described as a rehearsal for his eventual trial; in the face of increasing brutality, he is talked through how he will make his confession, word-for-word, until he has learnt it off by heart and is reciting it with no prompting, and this scene rang a bell with me, as I read both books around the same time, immediately redolent of those unfortunates in the dungeons of Moscow's Lubyanka Prison, being put through the same paces.(less)

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Dec 18, 2011 Lola rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: History teachers, conspiracy theory believers and critics

Shelves: reviewed, history

I stumbled across this at a home goods store. While my mom looked at a bunch of random crap we don't actually need, I dug through a huge crate of books that were ridiculously marked down. Amongst the new Ann Brashare book and some truly horrible teen lit, I found this. It was a year, however, until I read it. I'm glad I did.

This was an excellent study of not only some of the the greatest conspiracy theories in the history of the world but also how conspirators can hold on to their theories de...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Aaron rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Aaronovitch's exploration of some of the lasting conspiracy theories of the 20th and 21st centuries is enthralling. This is not a book for those who hold fast to conspiracy theories-- Aaronovitch's careful, reasoned skepticism dismantles them utterly.

One thing that I particularly liked about the book was the focus not just on rightist theories but from those held by the left as well. I was especially gratified to find his discussion of the Stalinist show trials thorough. He also discusses the l...more

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Feb 08, 2012 Andy Dowling rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Numpties who still think Princess Diana was murdered.

Shelves: factual

I found this book hugely informative and particularly liked the way it was structured; first laying out the conspiracy almost as if it were a matter of fact, then goin back over it and systemaically picking what are for the most part justifiably huge wholes in the evidence. Only really in the case of Dr. David Kelly's death did something still not sit right after the explanation provided, but maybe that's just me (and if anyone from MI5 is reading this, it's not me either, I swear.) Fascinating...more

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About David Aaronovitch

David Aaronovitch is an award-winning journalist who has worked in radio, television, and newspapers in the United Kingdom since the early 1980s. His first book, Paddling to Jerusalem, won the Madoc prize for travel literature in 2001. He is also the recipient of the George Orwell Prize for political journalism. He writes a regular column for The Times (UK). He lives in north London with his wife...more

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Books by David Aaronovitch

Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country

A Pre-emptive Foreign Policy is a Recipe for Disaster: An Intelligence Squared Debate

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