New Books In History

In preparation for this interview I watched the documentary (that’s what the producers call it, anyway) “Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup.” Of course it’s absolutely loony. In fact, it’s so loony that I began to wonder if the director, Dylan Avery, wasn’t having us on. It’s hard to tell whether “Loose Change” is a you’ve-gotta-hear-this conspiracy theory or a tongue-firmly-in-cheek parody of a conspiracy theory. Maybe I’m just jaded, but it seems to me–particularly after reading David Aaronovitch’s excellent book Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy Theory in the Shaping of Modern History (Penguin, 2010)–that we’ve heard all this before: Satan’s children did it, the Freemasons did it, the Illuminati did it, the Jews did it, the the Commies did it, the Mafia did it, the John Birch Society did it, the Trilateral Commission did it, the Bilderberg Group did it, the Club of Rome did it, Skull and Bones did it, PNAC did it, and everyone else has done “it” whatever “it” happens to be. Every time one of these insidious plots “comes to light” it turns out to be a sickly-sweet cocktail of paranoia, anger, and don’t-let-the-facts-get-in-the-way-of-your-argument speculation. You’d think we’d have learned by now not to believe that “dark, hidden forces” are behind everything because, well, they demonstrably aren’t. But people want to believe these things, particularly when they seem to explain why something distrubing–say, the collapse of Germany in WWI, the high costs of rapid industrialization in the USSR in the 1930s, or America’s evident lack of preparation for 9/11–wasn’t “our” fault, but rather someone else’s. I would like to think that David’s wonderful book will put an end to loopy conspiracy theories so that we can get on with the important business of fixing things that matter. It probably won’t, but nonetheless Voodoo History is certainly a fine step in that direction and I applaud David for writing it (and you for reading it).

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Tags: 19th Century, 20th Century, 9/11, Anti-Semitism, Assassination, CIA, Catholicism, Christianity, Communism, Conspiracy Theories, George W. Bush, Historiography, Hitler, Hoaxes, Intellectuals, JFK, Jews, Joseph McCarthy, Mafia, Nazis, Papacy, Paranoia, Politics, Popular Culture, Propaganda, Public Intellectuals, Red Scare, Soviet Union, Stalin, Trotsky, Witchhunts, Zionism by Marshall Poe
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The modern newspaper is not as old as you think. Until the early nineteenth century, they were thin and expensive. It was only with the advent of the penny press circa 1830 that the truly mass broadsheet was born. Yet selling a paper for a cent was not a straight-forward business proposition. In order to turn a profit, you needed to sell a lot of copy. You won’t be surprised to learn that the best way to move papers was to give the people what they wanted–scandal, outrage, marvels, miracles and outright inventions. In The Sun and the Moon. The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (Basic Books, 2008) shows how the early masters of the trade invented the modern paper by telling the public that the moon was inhabited by the recognizable ancestors of “Bat Boy.” Goodman marches a gallery of rogues across the book’s pages–an astronomer with an over-active imagination, an editor with an invented past, a horde of street urchins hawking papers and eating oysters. P.T. Barnum and Edger Allan Poe make appearances! This is a terrifically entertaining book, popular history at its best. And, of course, it’s ALL TRUE! Now put down The Weekly World News and go buy The Sun and the Moon!

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Tags: 19th Century, Edgar Allen Poe, Hoaxes, Journalism, New York, Newspapers, P. T. Barnum by Marshall Poe
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