Ten top books to understand conspiracy thinking

Colin Dickey is the author of five books of nonfiction: Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy; The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained; Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places; Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the Ends of Faith; and Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius. He is also the co-editor (with Joanna Ebenstein) of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology.

At Publishers Weekly Dickey tagged ten of the best books to understand conspiracy thinking, including:

The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny by Susan Lepselter

Lepselter blends the genres of academic monograph and memoir in ways that make for a fascinating read. She spends time out in the desert near Area 51, hanging out with believers looking for aliens and trying to understand their deeper motivations, in the process tracing the metaphors and stories that conservative Americans tell themselves to make sense of a changing world. Literary in style and beautifully written, it’s not like any other book you’ve read, and definitely one I’ve returned to again and again.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue