A book has the ability to change who you are as a person. The first time I read Charlotte's Web my perspective on death changed from something horrible to something that's a part of life. I still search for books that draw me into a world and when the book ends, a piece of me feels empty, but in a good way. The good news is that there are thousands of books that we can live in. My favorite quote of all time – “It is the reader that lives a thousand lives.” I've completed more than 80 book signings across the US, and I enjoy helping other writers achieve their goals.
What if I told you that Charles Manson was part of a United States CIA project that was directly responsible for the death of many people? This book will show you how author Tom O’Neil gathered government documents and testimonies about the link between the CIA and Charles Manson. See how The Beach Boys and Hollywood movie stars were pawns in a game controlled by several government programs and this book has the evidence to back up these outrageous claims. I used to have a very different point of view of Manson before this book, and now I see him very differently.
As featured on The Joe Rogan Experience ______________________________ A journalist's twenty-year obsession with the Manson murders leads to shocking new conspiracy theories about the FBI's involvement in this fascinating re-evaluation of one of the most infamous cases in American history.
Twenty years ago, reporting for a routine magazine piece about the infamous Manson murders, journalist Tom O'Neill didn't expect to find anything new. But the discovery of horrifying new evidence kick-started an obsession and his life's work. What had he unearthed and what did it mean: why was there surveillance by intelligence agents? Why did the police make these particular…
I am an Oxford local historian, and the only Oxford guide endorsed by the Lewis Carroll Society. I have helped shape Oxford’s annual Alice’s Day since the first one in 2007, and have participated in French, Dutch, Canadian, Brazilian and British TV and radio documentaries, most notably for BBC 2 and BBC Radio 4. My interest is mainly the many Oxford realities which are hidden away within the apparent fantasy of the ‘Alice’ books, an angle which has enabled me to lecture on this internationally famous topic as far away as Assam in India. Subsequently, my appreciation of Carroll’s versatility as a mathematician, photographer, inventor, diarist, and letter writer has grown steadily over the years.
Actually, it is ten books, covering 1855 to 1897 (with a reconstruction of the missing journals of April 1858 to May 1862 – their disappearance being the cause of countless conspiracy theories!). These diaries are the principal source of practically every piece of Lewis Carroll/Alice analysis that has ever been published, and provide a uniquely revealing chronology of the genesis of one of the world’s classic works of literature. These volumes mean that the enigmatic genius of Lewis Carroll is not the sole preserve of academics or historians; through them, he becomes accessible to us all. Transcribed and fully indexed by Edward Wakeling, a renowned world expert, whose extraordinarily detailed and insightful bibliographical and contextual notes provide an unparalleled insight into Victorian Oxford (London, Surrey, Yorkshire, Sussex, and more).
I’ve always been fascinated and intrigued by human behavior and decision-making. What influences our thoughts and behavior and why? In hindsight, I probably should have majored in psychology instead of business, but as a business school professor I still get to investigate all the little quirks and biases of the human mind. I live in Bergen, Norway and devote much of my time researching and teaching consumer psychology and decision-making. I hope you find some inspiration in this list of brilliant books!
Misinformation, fake news, and conspiracy theories influence our minds, polarize societies and decrease trust.
The topic of this book is obviously very timely and highly relevant. In particular on social media, online conspiracies and misinformation spread like wildfire.
Foolproof explains the origins and mechanisms of misinformation in a clear manner and provides concrete strategies to overcome it. I think the ‘virus’-metaphor works well (“misinformation infects our minds”), and the book constitute a pretty good vaccine.
All in all, a well-written examination on how and why our brains entertain misinformation.
From fake news to conspiracy theories, from inflammatory memes to misleading headlines, misinformation has swiftly become the defining problem of our era. The crisis threatens the integrity of our democracies, our ability to cultivate trusting relationships, even our physical and psychological well-being-yet most attempts to combat it have proven insufficient. In Foolproof, one of the world's leading experts on misinformation lays out a crucial new paradigm for understanding and defending ourselves against the worldwide infodemic.
With remarkable clarity, Sander van der Linden explains why our brains are so vulnerable to misinformation, how it spreads across social networks, and what we…
I read widely and in many genres, so coming up with a thematic list was a difficult task. However, in working on my forthcoming novel Dead Ends, in which a quiet neighborhood descends into paranoia and insanity driven by fear, politics, and technology, I sought out novels that engaged with conspiratorial thinking and violence. I admire writers who don’t hold back and fully engage with their characters and material, particularly if it means going to dark, imaginative and strange places in their work. Please keep an eye out for Dead Ends, coming from Flame Tree Press in 2023.
Nick Mamatas never writes a typical novel and his latest offering is no exception. Built on the very real rumors and conspiracy theories surrounding mass shooting events in the United States, Mamatas' work offers hints and innuendos throughout of an invisible force seeking to create chaos, death, and destruction in collusion with a conspiracy theorist radio host fanning the flames. Like a real-life conspiracy theory, it’s all connected — somehow. Mamatas’ ability to draw a plot line and themes so at odds with our general perception of reality, the story, sadly, begins to reflect our real world of conspiracy theories and political paranoia in what has become a bat-shit age of American life.
"There was video of the second shooter. There was video."
In the first reports of every mass shooting, there's always mention of a second shooter-two sets of gunshots, a figure seen fleeing the scene-and they always seem to evaporate as events are pieced together.
Commissioned by a fringe publisher to investigate the phenomenon, journalist Mike Karras finds himself tailed by drones, attacked by a talk radio host, badgered by his all-knowing (and maybe all-powerful) editor, and teaming up with an immigrant family of conspiracy buffs.
Together, they uncover something larger and stranger than anyone could imagine-a technomystical plot to 'murder…
I’ve been writing for publication since I was a student, crudely the writing has been a way of medicating the fact I’m incurably curious about a range of things and I’ve also suffered from an over-production of ideas my whole life. Wrestling this under control into writing and live speaking where the subjects must fit within a title, word limit, or running time for a talk has been helpful, beyond which the whole writing career has been a trade off between things I’ve chosen to do because they matter a lot to me, and the occasional accepting of an offer I thought too good to refuse.
A clear and well-argued account of how the planet became obsessed with stories of alien encounters and what they might mean to us.
An essential read for anyone curious about the subject largely because it considers the whole planet, not just the truly UFO-obsessed United States. It frequently presents the best and most challenging UFO cases with a clarity that gets to the heart of each claim, and never forgets that one thing driving the enduring popularity of the subject is that – whatever the truth behind each claim – we’re dealing with incredible claims that make for great stories.
A history of the various manifestations and shifting meaning of the Twentieth Century's single great contribution to mythology: the UFO.
Neither a credulous work of conspiracy theory nor a sceptical debunking of belief in 'flying saucers', How UFOs Conquered the World explores the origins of UFOs in the build-up to the First World War and how reports of them have changed in tandem with world events, science and culture. The book will also explore the overlaps between UFO belief and religion and superstition.
As horror writer, I’m often asked what scares me most, and almost every fear I have is, at its core, about the Unknown. Not just what we don’t know but the things we cannot know. In all my books, I’ve tried to lean into that personal fear as much as possible, and with Heavy Oceans, I was inspired by the cases Mulder and Scully investigated back when the idea of a government lying to and spying on its own citizens seemed almost quaint by comparison to the moments we’re living. And, as the show’s title credit often said, in glowing words that blazed over a darkened sky…"The Truth is Out There."
Most readers know this feeling well: when a book you love doesn’t seem to get the attention you feel it deserves. That’s exactly how I view Daniel Kraus’ excellent and suspenseful novel, Bent Heavens. Maybe because it was marketed as YA (whatever that means these days), or maybe because he’s so prolific that it can be hard to keep up with all his work.
Whatever the reason, this book features conspiracy theories, a missing father, government secrets, and exactly the kind of fog-shrouded abandoned places Mulder and Scully tend to explore during their investigations. Yeah, it’s creepy. Yeah, it’s mysterious. But more than that, it’s got characters you care about.
Liv Fleming is done with childhood fantasies. Done pretending she believes her missing father's absurd theories about alien abduction. Done going through the motions of checking the traps he set just for her friend Doug's sake. But on the very day she chooses to destroy the traps, she discovers in one of them a creature so inhuman it can only be one thing. In that moment, she's faced with a painful realisation: Her dad was telling the truth. And no one believed him.
Now she and Doug have a choice to make. They can turn the alien over to the…
Being a musician does funny things to you. It leads you to look for patterns in the beautiful – and not-so-beautiful. To my mind, music is art and logic perfectly combined. I believe this unique combination offers musicians extra insights into the world around us. My desire to discover patterns in the world around me, fused with an underlying sense of injustice, has helped shape the opinions and ideas for a better social model that I write about today. I've founded several online initiatives, written extensively, and given talks around the concept of a post-money, open access economy. I believe this will ultimately prove to be the only viable path for humanity over the next century.
As someone who campaigns for a better way to operate spaceship Earth, Dispelling Wetiko was the precise slap in the face I needed to break free from the spell that has captured so many would-be change-makers like myself. It’s so easy to look around and point the finger at those who benefit most from the world’s problems as being the cause agents when nothing could be further from the truth.
It is our collective hopes, our weaknesses, and our fears – multiplied in their billions – that create the super-structure that billionaires enjoy. Levy defines this as a collective psychosis of humanity that wreaks havoc on the world around us – a psychosis that we must face down before we can hope to defeat it.
There is a contagious psychospiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus—which Native Americans have called "wetiko"—covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests.
Drawing on insights from Jungian psychology, shamanism, alchemy, spiritual wisdom traditions, and personal experience, author Paul Levy shows us that hidden within the venom of wetiko is its own antidote, which once recognized…
Of all the books I have ever written, this one most allowed me to make it possible to see how the full story adds to the history we know – the vital importance of context. For example, that Cabot set sail just as Bristol was defending itself against the approaching rebel army led by Perkin Warbeck. Or that the Pope at the time, ruling over the church and the world, was the Borgia Pope Alexander VI. I loved researching it and I still feel part of it. My father lives in Spain, which helped enormously.
Every European nation has its own conspiracy theory about discovering America. This is the best and most readable evocation of the British conspiracy theory – that, far from being called after Amerigo Vespucci, the new world was called after John Cabot’s backer Richard Ameryk – who, bizarrely, had the stars and stripes as his family crest.
Casts a new light on the conventional story of America's discovery by showing how a chain of clues point towards Bristol mariners reaching America before Columbus. The author has also written "The Turin Shroud" and other bestselling investigative works.
I'm a survivor of repeated physical, psychological, and sexual abuse in childhood and have significant lived experience of the long-lasting and devastating impact of abuse. I was a social worker for 27 years and am a co-founder of The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC). In my 27 years in social work and 20 years involvement in NAPAC I heard of many accounts from adult survivors of various types of abuse. One of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is to introduce Mandatory Reporting. I believe this is a must to help prevent and or reduce the risk of abuse for our children at the earliest possible stage.
I know Valerie through my voluntary work with survivors and am aware of her work at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies.
She has years of experience as a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist working with trauma, disability, dissociation, and torture so Valerie knows what she is talking about. In this book she uses her knowledge and expertise to cleverly weave a background of fact that people would find too hard to believe into a brilliant work of fiction.
Her book left me wondering, ‘Does that sort of thing really happen’? It does. Children continue to be at risk and adult survivors continue to live with the trauma of the abuse they experienced.
It's Christmas Eve, and a young woman with Down's syndrome has just disclosed abuse by two men. The problem is she is a member of the British aristocracy and the men she accuses are a top politician and a rock star. How does a national health team struggle with the situation of alleged abuse by the elite and super rich? Despite a traitor in their midst, the team uncovers the appalling reality of the abusive international cult known as The Orpheus Project with its mysterious American spokesperson and powerful connections. This is the world of conspiracy theories; the Orpheus Project…
I’ve spent the past ten years reporting and writing true crime narratives about teenagers and hate, first in The 57 Bus and now in Accountable. My research has led me into some fascinating places and has left me convinced that we cannot prevent what we don’t understand. In both books I found that the young people who harmed others weren’t the stereotypical grimacing loners I’d always associated with hate and extremism. Instead, they were imitating behaviors that we see all around us. Being young, with brains that aren’t fully developed in important ways, and lacking the life experience that teaches us a more nuanced understanding of the world, they are ripe for radicalization.
After watching both a close friend and a relative get radicalized through online disinformation, I realized that no one is immune, no matter how smart or how educated, if they don’t have the tools to recognize disinformation when it comes their way.
Media scholar Samuel C. Spitale has written a compulsively readable and highly entertaining explanation of what disinformation is and how to recognize and combat it. The propaganda mills are churning out disinformation faster than ever before and even those of us who think we’re too smart to be fooled are vulnerable.
The average person receives 4,000 to 10,000 media messages a day. It s no wonder we struggle to separate the news from the noise and fact from fiction but in these unprecedented times, it s essential to democracy that we do. For anyone struggling to figure out how to live and vote their values, How to Win the War on Truth is here to help. You ll learn: The history of propaganda, from Edward Bernays to Fox News Why simple messages are so powerful How social messaging creates unconscious biases Who profits from propaganda How propaganda is manufactured and delivered…
