American Culture/Politics

“Conspiracy Theories is a fascinating look at an important, little-studied topic. Informative and thought provoking.” —Philadelphia City Paper

“Fenster, a lone writer (the literary equivalent of a lone gunman, perhaps), segues from the novels of Thomas Pynchon to the Clinton Death List. Conspiracy Theories is a dangerous book. I suspect ‘they’ (and you know who I mean, of course) will take care of this lone writer any day now.” — Bookforum

“A commendably level-headed analysis of the grip that conspiracy theories maintain on contemporary America. By neither dismissing paranoid kooks nor being seduced by their yarns, Fenster constructs a strong case that even while we do not believe, we should nonetheless listen.” — Publishers Weekly

JFK, Karl Marx, the pope, Aristotle Onassis, Howard Hughes, Fox Mulder, Bill Clinton, both George Bushes—all have been linked to vastly complicated global (or even galactic) intrigues. Two years after Mark Fenster first published Conspiracy Theories, the attacks of 9/11 stirred the imaginations of a new generation of believers. In this new edition of the landmark work, and the first in-depth look at the conspiracy communities that formed to debunk the 9/11 Commission Report, Fenster shows that conspiracy theories play an important role in U.S. democracy. Examining how and why conspiracy theories circulate through mass culture, he argues that dismissing them as pathological or marginal flattens contemporary politics and culture because they are—contrary to popular portrayal—an intense articulation of populism and, at their essence, are strident calls for a better, more transparent government. Fenster demonstrates once again that the people who claim someone’s after us are, at least, worth hearing.

Mark Fenster is professor at the University of Florida Law School.

University of Minnesota Press
Printed in U.S.A.
Cover design by Frances Baca Design