Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire

Product Information

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her. Yet I found myself on two occasions pulling over in a park for 15 minutes between appointments to open up my Kindle just to enjoy another chapter. Characterizing conspiracy theories as “a secularized version of religion,” Dickey argues they must be resisted as part of the struggle for a free and fair democracy. From this novel I learned if you want the truth out of someone, you have to ask the right questions, probing questions that require a specific answer other than yes or no, but even more than that, listen for inconsistencies. Lepselter blends the genres of academic monograph and memoir in ways that make for a fascinating read.

Conspiracy is an interesting read, though it’s not exactly comforting to realise that such theories are common throughout human history as it challenges notions of human enlightenment and progress. It wasn't the outing itself, however, that most got to him, but the second narrative, that he has psychological problems because he didn't want to be outed. It had always been Nick's nature to push deeper, to speculate, to needle, to drill down to the interesting stuff-and there was no deeper well of ressentiment than the endless scroll of the comments section. The writing doesn't always come off - some of the sentences are a little awkward, and some of the comparisons seem a little superficial.

This book will appeal to anyone interested in conspiracy theories, misinformation, culture wars, social media and contemporary society. It wouldn't be fair to say, as some partisans have in the intervening years, that Owen Thomas was some reckless blogger who plucked some private citizen from nowhere for his story. Like most movements that harness the power of an underappreciated class, the environment was temperamental and volatile, but you could not argue that the results were not also entertaining and forceful. More than mere business history, Holiday elevates the story into something far more lasting, casting Thiel's actions into the timeless mold of the conspirator: the man who, armed with patience and an indignant urge to reshape the world, co-opts allies, musters resources, lulls adversaries, and ultimately strikes when the time is right, changing everything.

Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19 provides a wide-ranging analysis of the emergence and development of conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemic, with a focus on the US and the UK.Orwell saw, to his credit, that the act of falsifying reality is only secondarily a way of changing perceptions. Written in 2001 and revised in 2013, Barkun’s analysis still feels fresh despite everything that’s happened since.