From Publishers Weekly
"I find enough strange circumstances to make me dizzy," writes Vankin, editor of Metro , an "alternative" weekly newspaper in San Jose, Calif. His survey of conspiracies is divided into two parts, the first profiling people who see historical and ongoing political events as plots, the second section exploring their ideas. Many of these theories are bizarre, involving the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Knights of Templar and, more recently, the Soviet Politburo, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Mafia and the CIA. Conjectures include speculation about humans programmed a la the Manchurian Candidate ; the possibility that Jonestown was not a mass suicide; and the question of whether white Europeans are the "real Jews," and those who actually identify themselves as Jews members of a mongrel race merely pretending to be Jewish.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Vankin is enamored of conspiracy theories: "I've opened myself to conspiracy theories and applied total skepticism to official stories." Despite wide reading and a useful bibliography, his result is a disjointed selection of "slabs and slices of information" about conspiracy theorists such as Lyndon LaRouche and Jim Garrison and alleged conspiracies such as the Kennedy assassinations and Jonestown. Vankin calls President Bush, with his CIA background, "the embodiment of conspiracy," but he offers no thesis other than admiration for the conspiratorial viewpoint. Not only is balance lacking, but so too is discrimination between plausible conspiracies, such as Iran-contra, and paranoid silliness. No doubt this book will attract some readers, but it is not a necessary selection for most libraries.
- Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Gregor A. Preston, Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
