The Washington Post 's "50 Best NonFiction Books of 2023" "Roaming from the Freemasons to QAnon, this tour of American moral panics amid social upheaval and downturn is a bracing reminder that conspiratorial thinking is nothing new." --New York Times Book Review's " Editors' Choice" "Dickey vividly retells the histories of many of the conspiratorial fables that Americans have used to frighten and mobilize themselves, offering complex, well-informed analyses." --The Washington Post "In his timely new book.Colin Dickey writes entertainingly about conspiracy theories, real and imagined." --The Boston Globe "[A] poignant argument on how belief in secret societies, from the KKK to QAnon, influences American democracy." --Chicago Tribune "We can think of no better writer than Colin Dickey.to examine America's foundational obsession with conspiracy. From Salem to John Birch to Pizzagate, the "paranoid style" has been a part of this country's identity long before it was given name by John Hofstadter in 1964.

But what are we to do when people would rather ascribe their ill fortune to shadowy cabals of powerful puppet masters than the randomness of the universe? For Dickey, the first step is admitting we have a problem." --LitHub's "10 Nonfiction Books to Read This July" "A vivid and intriguing recontextualization of a misunderstood aspect of American history." -- Publishers Weekly *Starred Review* "An entertaining, elucidating, and disturbing trip off the beaten path." -- Publishers Weekly "2023 Summer Reads" "The author of Ghostland and The Unidentified returns with a colorful history of conspiracy theories in the U.S.In an engrossing narrative, Dickey explains how the human search for purpose can become comical, weird, and/or dark." --Kirkus Reviews.