Genres

Conspiracies

Lists

Humanist Anthology by Revised by Jim Herrick Marg...

Funerals Without God by Jane Wynne Willson

Scepticism And Debunking Claims About The Paranormal

53 books — 1 voter

Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism! by Todor Bombov

Underground Knowledge (fiction and nonfiction)

1,348 books — 637 voters

Never Go With Your Gut by Gleb Tsipursky

BEST BOOKS THAT MAKE YOU THINK

21 books — 17 voters

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark by Campbell Black

Raiders of the Lost Ark by Lawrence Kasdan

The Ark of the Covenant in Its Egyptian Context by David A. Falk

The Ark of the Covenant

53 books — 5 voters

The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

The Ultimate List of Conspiracy Theory Books

366 books — 109 voters

When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

If You Loved The Film Get Out, You'll Love These: Black Southern Gothics by African-Americans

6 books — 6 voters

Featured News & Interviews

Get Ready! Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2026

Read »

“ By now, certain alternate theories are beginning to circulate online. It's the government, they say. Or it's Big Pharma. Some kind of germ must have gotten loose from a lab at the college. Think about it, they say: Do you really believe that a completely new virus could show up in the most powerful country on earth without scientists knowing exactly what it is? They probably engineered it themselves. They might be spreading this thing on purpose, testing out a biological weapon. They might be ...more ”
― Karen Thompson Walker, The Dreamers

2 likes

“ Reflective nostalgics miss the past and dream about the past. Some of them study the past and even mourn the past, especially their own personal past. But they do not really want the past back. Perhaps this is because, deep down, they know that the old homestead is in ruins, or because it has been gentrified beyond recognition--or because they quietly recognize that they wouldn't much like it now anyway. Once upon a time life might have been sweeter or simpler, but it was also more dangerous, or Reflective nostalgics miss the past and dream about the past. Some of them study the past and even mourn the past, especially their own personal past. But they do not really want the past back. Perhaps this is because, deep down, they know that the old homestead is in ruins, or because it has been gentrified beyond recognition--or because they quietly recognize that they wouldn't much like it now anyway. Once upon a time life might have been sweeter or simpler, but it was also more dangerous, or more boring, or perhaps more unjust. Radically different from the reflective nostalgics are what Boym calls the restorative nostalgics, not all of whom recognize themselves as nostalgics at all. Restorative nostalgics don't just look at old photographs and piece together family stories. They are mythmakers and architects, builders of monuments and founders of nationalist political projects. They do not merely want to contemplate or learn from the past. They want, as Boym puts it, to "rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps." Many of them don't recognize their own fictions about the past for what they are: "They believe their project is about truth." They are not interested in a nuanced past, in a world in which great leaders were flawed men, in which famous military victories had lethal side effects. They don't acknowledge that the past might have had its drawbacks. They want the cartoon version of history, and more importantly, they want to live in it, right now. They don't want to act out roles from the past because it amuses them: they want to behave as think their ancestors did, without irony. It is not by accident that restorative nostalgia often goes hand in hand with conspiracy theories and the medium-sized lies. These needn't be as harsh or crazy as the Smolensk conspiracy theory or the Soros conspiracy theory; they can gently invoke scapegoats rather than a full-fledged alternative reality. At a minimum, they can offer an explanation: The nation is no longer great because someone has attacked us, undermined us, sapped our strength. Someone—the immigrants, the foreigners, the elites, or indeed the EU—has perverted the course of history and reduced the nation to a shadow of its former self. The essential identity that we once had has been taken away and replaced with something cheap and artificial. Eventually, those who seek power on the back of restorative nostalgia will begin to cultivate these conspiracy theories, or alternative histories, or alternative fibs, whether or not they have any basis in fact. ...more ”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

1 likes

More quotes...