Hoaxes

A hoax is a falsehood deliberately fabricated to masquerade as the truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences, and April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes. ...more

The Museum of Hoaxes
The Fairy Ring
The Giant and How He Humbugged America
A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History's Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes, and Frauds
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science
The Coming of the Fairies
Assuming Names: A Con Artist's Masquerade
Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black
Martian Ghost Centaur
It Came From the Sky
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor
The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York
Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth
Three Cups of Deceit by Jon KrakauerThe Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by J.T. LeRoySarah by J.T. LeRoyBunk by Kevin YoungHarold's End by J.T. LeRoy
Hoaxes And Publicity Stunts
43 books — 8 voters
The Cottingley Secret by Hazel GaynorThe Cottingley Fairies by Ana SenderThe Coming of the Fairies by Arthur Conan DoyleCottingley by Alison LittlewoodThe Cottingley Cuckoo by A.J. Elwood
Cottingley Fairies
14 books — 10 voters

Death, Taxes, and Turduckens by Jens Kurt HeyckeBad Blood by John CarreyrouPlaying Dead by Elizabeth  GreenwoodThe Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLeanThe Big Short by Michael   Lewis
Scams, Scandals and Frauds
181 books — 26 voters
Go Ask Alice by Beatrice SparksA Million Little Pieces by James FreySurviving With Wolves by Misha DefonsecaJay's Journal by Beatrice SparksThe Hand That Signed the Paper by Helen Dale
Fake Autobiographies
39 books — 23 voters


Lila Felix
I’m here Corinne. I’m here waiting for you to realize that helping you, listening to you, sitting in silence with you, holding you while you cry, kissing you until you can’t think straight—I’m honored to be the one who does those things for you. I’m privileged to hear the words ‘I love you’ from your mouth and have them directed at me. But if you don’t need me, then you don’t need me. So this is me telling you that if you find that you do need me, want me, whatever, it’s your turn. Come find me. ...more
Lila Felix, Hoax

Adam Hochschild
Bruce Gilley is right, that I was misleading in respect to one quotation I cited from another official, Charles Lemaire. I am sorry about that and it should be corrected. Lemaire was a more complicated case. His early diaries, which I quote elsewhere in the book, unroll a lengthy list of villages he ordered burned to the ground and a triumphant roster of death tolls: “20 natives killed” here, “around 15 blacks killed” there, and many more such boasts. But later in life, to his credit, Lemaire ha ...more
Adam Hochschild, The Ghost Still Haunts: Adam Hochschild responds to Bruce Gilley, who follows in kind

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