A fascinating tour of oddball wrongheadedness, with gentle but firm prescriptions for combatting it.
The bestselling author and publisher of Skeptic magazine investigates why people believe conspiracy theories.
For many contemporary Americans, QAnon is an alluring explanation for the unexplainable. Technically, writes Shermer, “it’s not even wrong” because its claims are so broad that it resists being proven wrong. There may be such a thing as a “deep state”—even if, as the author points out, most people aren’t good enough at keeping secrets or carrying out their part in conspiracies to make them work. As evidence, he cites two assassinations. The plot to kill Abraham Lincoln also included multiple other targets, but only John Wilkes Booth succeeded in his assignment. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand almost happened by accident, since Gavrilo Princip lost sight of his target and only stumbled on the car because of a driver’s error. The conspiracy theory that evolved led to catastrophe: Austro-Hungarians assumed that the Serbian government was in on the plot, and World War I ensued. “Imagine how differently the twentieth century would have unfolded without the Great War,” writes Shermer, “sparing the lives of tens of millions of people…[and] almost certainly…no Hitler, no Nazis, no World War II, and no Holocaust.” The author writes that while the conspiracy theories surrounding John F. Kennedy’s death are understandable, given that governments, spy agencies, and the CIA harbor secrets, there’s no good evidence to support any postulate other than that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Noting that there are degrees of belief in conspiracy theory—36% of people Shermer surveyed believe that the government is hiding information about the JFK assassination, while, only 11% believe that 5G towers increase the risk of Covid-19 infection—the author suggests that perhaps the best thing to do with the QAnon believer at the dinner table is to try to listen sympathetically while pushing back respectfully. Better still is to stop the spread of misinformation in the first place, which is far more difficult.
A fascinating tour of oddball wrongheadedness, with gentle but firm prescriptions for combatting it.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4214-4445-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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