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Jonn Elledge, Tom Phillips: Conspiracy: A History of Boll*cks Theories, and How Not to Fall for Them 4 stars

Only skims the surface

3 stars

(Disclaimer: I've known Jonn Elledge through social media and fandom for a while, but I bought this book) The main issue I have with this book is that it isn't really sure what it wants to be. There's a really interesting essay in the middle of it about the history of health and pandemic related conspiracies, but it's surrounded by some very surface-skimming summaries of other conspiracy theories that don't really get examined in any great depth. When they go in depth, it works well, but the rest feels like reading Wikipedia while someone rehearses a bunch of jokes at you - some of the asides are amusing, but there are too many of them and they feel like they're they're in place of any analysis of what this all means.