Five of the best books about conspiracy theories

James Ball is the Global Editor at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Previously special projects editor at The Guardian and special projects editor at BuzzFeed UK, James played a key role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, as well as the offshore leaks, HSBC Files, Reading the Riots and Keep it in the Ground projects.

At WikiLeaks he was closely involved in Cablegate - the publication of 250,000 classified US embassy cables in 2010 - as well as working on two documentaries based on the Iraq War Logs.

Ball is the author of The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World.

At the Guardian he tagged five of the best books about conspiracy theories, including:

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

Most people who write about conspiracy theories do so because they’ve been drawn to that world through their own curiosity. That wasn’t the case for Naomi Klein, who was largely dragged in against her will.

Through her career, Klein had often been confused with her fellow writer Naomi Wolf. But while once this was harmless (if annoying), when Wolf went down the Covid rabbit hole, it was anything but. Suddenly, Wolf was spreading dangerous misinformation about Covid vaccines – and people were still mixing up the two women. This book is Klein’s story of following her titular double into conspiracy-land.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see Colin Dickey's ten brilliant books to understand conspiracy thinking and Anna Merlan's five of the best books on conspiracy theories in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kevin Padraic Donnelly's "The Descent of Artificial Intelligence"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Descent of Artificial Intelligence: A Deep History of an Idea 400 Years in the Making by Kevin Padraic Donnelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

The idea that a new technology could challenge human intelligence is as old as the warning from Socrates and Plato that written language eroded memory. With the emergence of generative artificial intelligence programs, we find ourselves once again debating how a new technology might influence human thought and behavior. Researchers, software developers, and “visionary” tech writers even imagine an AI that will equal or surpass human intelligence, adding to a sense of technological determinism where humanity is inexorably shaped by powerful new machines. But among the hundreds of essays, books, and movies that approach the question of AI, few have asked how exactly scientists and philosophers have codified human thought and behavior. Rather than focusing on technical contributions in machine building, The Descent of Artificial Intelligence explores a more diverse cast of thinkers who helped to imagine the very kind of human being that might be challenged by a machine. Kevin Padraic Donnelly argues that what we often think of as the “goal” of AI has in fact been shaped by forgotten and discredited theories about people and human nature as much as it has been by scientific discoveries, mathematical advances, and novel technologies. By looking at the development of artificial intelligence through the lens of social thought, Donnelly deflates the image of artificial intelligence as a technological monolith and reminds readers that we can control the narratives about ourselves.

Learn more about The Descent of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Pittsburgh Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Descent of Artificial Intelligence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sarah Easter Collins

From my Q&A with Sarah Easter Collins, author of Things Don't Break on Their Own: A Novel:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

As a title, Things Don’t Break On Their Own implies the involvement of outside forces: things can break, and more significantly, so can people, but none of that happens by itself, and this is certainly a true reflection of the nature of the story. A reader will discover two distinct families in Things Don’t Break On Their Own. Laika and Willa’s family is all about appearances, to the point that they are obsessed with not having any of their cracks showing, whereas in Robyn’s family, everything can always be fixed, mended, saved for later and made better. They are loud, messy and their cracks are visible and worn with love.

When a bowl breaks at Robyn’s house, her father shows the two girls how they can use the Japanese art of Kintsugi to mend it. I love the idea behind Kintsugi, that something can be made more beautiful by the very act of mending it. Robyn comes from a family where things break all the time, but vitally things – and people – are treasured. So healing is a big theme of the novel, and...[read on]

Visit Sarah Easter Collins's website.

The Page 69 Test: Things Don't Break on Their Own.

Q&A with Sarah Easter Collins.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sheila Curran Bernard's "Bring Judgment Day"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies by Sheila Curran Bernard.

About the book, from the publisher:

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889–1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous – as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons. But, as this deeply researched book shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past.

Visit Sheila Curran Bernard's website.

The Page 99 Test: Bring Judgment Day.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven sports novels about more than athleticism

Adrian Markle is the author of the novel Bruise and many short stories. Originally from Canada, he now lives with his partner in Cornwall, UK, where he teaches English and Creative Writing at Falmouth University.

"[S]port novels are never only about sport," Markle claims.

As sport exists as a product of our political and politicized cultures, so then do explorations and depictions of it. Stories about sport are also stories about class, gender, race, identity, mental health, disability, or collective vs individual identity (though probably not all of them all at once).

At Electric Lit the author tagged seven contemporary novels about sport. One title on the list:

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Straightforward and punchy, Carrie Soto Is Back is about the titular Carrie, the winningest Grand Slam champion in tennis history. She retires on top. And then, five years later, the younger Nicki Chan dominates the tour and closes in on Carrie’s records. But all the spiky, unpopular Carrie Soto really has is her records, so she laces up her signature shoes for one last season to keep what records she can and reclaim the rest. Along the way, she tries to rebuild her relationships with her father—who had been her coach once, until she fired him—with her exes and opponents, with the sport of tennis, with the concept of winning, and with herself. Who will she be when, eventually, she’s no longer the best in the world?

Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sarah Easter Collins's "Things Don’t Break On Their Own"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Things Don't Break on Their Own: A Novel by Sarah Easter Collins.

About the book, from the publisher:

A heart-wrenching mystery about sisters, lovers, and a dinner party gone wrong.

Twenty-five years ago, a young girl left home to walk to school. Her younger sister soon followed. But one of them arrived, and one of them didn’t.

Her sister’s disappearance has defined Willa’s life. Everyone thinks her sister is dead, but Willa knows she isn’t. Because there are some things that only sisters know about each other—and some bonds only sisters can break.

Willa sees fragments of her sister everywhere — the way that woman on the train turns her head, the gait of that woman in Paris. If there’s the slightest resemblance, Willa drops everything, and everyone, and tries to see if it is her.

When Willa is invited to a dinner party thrown by her first love, she has no reason to expect it will be anything other than an ordinary evening. Both of them have moved on, ancient history. But nothing about Willa’s life has been ordinary since the day her sister disappeared, and that’s not about to change tonight.

Sarah Easter Collins has written an extraordinary novel about memory, lost love, and long-buried secrets that sometimes see the light of day.

Visit Sarah Easter Collins's website.

The Page 69 Test: Things Don't Break on Their Own.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tracy L. Steffes's "Structuring Inequality"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Structuring Inequality: How Schooling, Housing, and Tax Policies Shaped Metropolitan Development and Education by Tracy L. Steffes.

About the book, from the publisher:

How inequality was forged, fought over, and forgotten through public policy in metropolitan Chicago.

As in many American metropolitan areas, inequality in Chicagoland is visible in its neighborhoods. These inequalities are not inevitable, however. They have been constructed and deepened by public policies around housing, schooling, taxation, and local governance, including hidden state government policies.

In Structuring Inequality, historian Tracy L. Steffes shows how metropolitan inequality in Chicagoland was structured, contested, and naturalized over time even as reformers tried to change it through school desegregation, affordable housing, and property tax reform. While these efforts had modest successes in the city and the suburbs, reformers faced significant resistance and counter-mobilization from affluent suburbanites, real estate developers, and other defenders of the status quo who defended inequality and reshaped the policy conversation about it. Grounded in comprehensive archival research and policy analysis, Structuring Inequality examines the history of Chicagoland’s established systems of inequality and provides perspective on the inequality we live with today.

Learn more about Structuring Inequality at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Structuring Inequality.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top thrillers set in Italy

Tom Hindle hails from Leeds and lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, a cat and two surprisingly cunning tortoises.

He is the author of A Fatal Crossing, The Murder Game, and Murder on Lake Garda – which were inspired by masters of the crime genre such as Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz.

At the Waterstones blog Hindle tagged six favorite thrillers set in Italy, as is of course Murder on Lake Garda. One title on the list:

Imperium by Robert Harris

For those partial to a historical thriller, the first entry in Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy transports us to ancient Rome, where we follow a promising young lawyer as he embarks on one of the most dramatic courtroom battles ever fought. If he wins, Cicero may seize control of Rome itself. Lose, however, and he’ll be finished. An all-round masterclass in historical fiction-writing, this story of an epic struggle for power is one for the ages.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see John Hooper's top ten books about Italy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Menika B. Dirkson's "Hope and Struggle in the Policed City"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Hope and Struggle in the Policed City: Black Criminalization and Resistance in Philadelphia by Menika B. Dirkson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explores how concerns about poverty-induced Black crime cultivated by police, journalists, and city officials sparked a rise in tough-on-crime policing in Philadelphia

During the Great Migration of African Americans to the North, Philadelphia’s police department, journalists, and city officials used news media to create and reinforce narratives that criminalized Black people and led to police brutality, segregation, and other dehumanizing consequences for Black communities. Over time, city officials developed a system of racial capitalism in which City Council financially divested from social welfare programs and instead invested in the police department, promoting a “tough on crime” policing program that generated wealth for Philadelphia’s tax base in an attempt to halt white flight from the city.

Drawing from newspapers, census records, oral histories, interviews, police investigation reports, housing project pamphlets, maps, and more, Hope and Struggle in the Policed City draws the connective line between the racial bias African Americans faced as they sought opportunity in the North and the over-policing of their communities, of which the effects are still visible today. Menika B. Dirkson posits that the tough-on-crime framework of this time embedded itself within every aspect of society, leading to enduring systemic issues of hyper-surveillance, the use of excessive force, and mass incarceration.

Hope and Struggle in the Policed City makes important contributions to our understanding of how a city government’s budgetary strategy can function as racial capitalism that relies on criminal scapegoating. Most cogently, it illustrates how this perpetuates the cycle of poverty-induced crime, inflates rates of incarceration and police brutality, and marginalizes poor people of color.

Learn more about Hope and Struggle in the Policed City at the NYU Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Hope and Struggle in the Policed City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top feminist caper stories

Tess Amy was born in Johannesburg but now enjoys a nomadic lifestyle, living between Europe and South Africa. She holds a master’s degree from The Durban University of Technology, is an outdoor enthusiast, animal lover and unfaltering optimist.

The Confidence Games is her debut contemporary fiction novel. She also writes historical fiction as T.A. Willberg.

At CrimeReads Amy tagged five "favorite feisty feminist caper stories," including:

The Heist by Janet Evanovich & Lee Goldberg

Although Janet Evanovich started out writing romance, she is, in my opinion, the Queen of contemporary crime fiction. The Heist, which is co-written by bestselling author and television writer, Lee Goldberg, is the first in her long running and tremendously popular Fox and O’Hare series.

The Heist introduces us to FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare as she sets out on the trail of the world’s greatest con man: the charming Nicholas Fox. But when Fox is eventually captured, he pulls off his finest con yet by cajoling the FBI into releasing him on the condition that he joins forces with Kate and works alongside her to hunt down other criminals. This book has all the dazzling action and sharp wit Evanovich is known for, plus a dash of romantic tension. What more could anyone want?

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ellen Won Steil’s “Becoming Marlow Fin,” the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Becoming Marlow Fin: A Novel by Ellen Won Steil.

The entry begins:

Becoming Marlow Fin is a suspense, family drama that centers around the sudden appearance of a little girl at the Baek Family’s Lake Superior cabin, and how her absorption into the family disrupts their seemingly perfect lives. Isla watches on as her adopted sister Marlow, grows up into a famous model and actress, their lives continually intwining with both moments of closeness and tension. Told through Isla’s reflections and Marlow’s perspective in a sensationalized “tell all” interview format, the twists and turns all culminate into a deadly incident at the lake where it all began.

As an author, I’m very visual in my process and tend to picture “scenes” playing out in my mind as I write them. Even with dialogue, I find it helps to envision the characters and their facial expressions. Especially with this story, I wanted characters who were diverse and uniquely beautiful, showcasing how our physical differences are truly our gifts.

For Marlow: The absolute dream, ideal casting for this multi-layered character is Zendaya. Unique in her loveliness both inside and out, she personifies how the standard for what we consider “beautiful” has changed. There’s something enigmatic about her and it’s hard to...[read on]

Visit Ellen Won Steil's website.

My Book, The Movie: Becoming Marlow Fin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Grundy's "Never By Itself Alone"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Never By Itself Alone: Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944―Present by David Grundy.

About the book, from the publisher:

Providing an unprecedented exploration of key moments in queer literary history, Never By Itself Alone changes our sense of both the American literary and political landscapes from the late 1940s through the 21st century. Grundy presents the first comprehensive history of post-war queer writing in Boston and San Francisco, intertwining analysis of lesbian, gay, and queer writing, and insisting on the link between activism and literature.

The book centers a host of underrepresented writers, especially writers of color and those with gender non-conforming identities, and challenges the Stonewall exceptionalism of queer historiography. Starting with Robert Duncan's 1944 essay, 'The Homosexual in Society', one of the first significant public defenses of homosexuality in the US, Grundy takes the reader through pioneering works by queer voices of the era, including Adrian Stanford's Black and Queer, the first published book by an out, Black gay poet in the US; the Boston collective Fag Rag and their radical reconsideration of family, private property and the State; the Combahee River Collective, whose Black Feminist analysis drew together race, class, and sexuality; the anthology This Bridge Called My Back, in which women of color spoke truth to power, together; and New Narrative writing, which audaciously mixed Marxism, porn and gossip while uniting against the New Right. Linking these works to the context which produced them, Grundy uncovers the communities formed around activism and small press publishing during this era and elevates neglected voices to narrate a history that before now has never been told in its entirety.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Never By Itself Alone is a rigorous and unmatched work of both literary criticism and queer scholarship which underscores the vital importance of radical accounts of race, class, and gender in any queer studies worthy of the name.

Learn more about Never By Itself Alone at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Never By Itself Alone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about women colliding with wild creatures

Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novels Bear and Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, she lives with her family in Brooklyn.

[Writers Read: Julia Phillips (June 2019)]

At Electric Lit Phillips tagged ten books in which

the women who meet wild creatures, both animal and mythical, are often trapped in their own lives. Domestic drudgery rules. They’re homemakers, caretakers, wives and mothers and daughters and sisters who are struggling against the limitations imposed on them. When they meet a beast, though, they are able to get to a previously inaccessible wildness. They break away from human rules, a strictly human world, and into something other—something extraordinary, something free. The beast outside provokes the transformation within.

One title on the list:

Sea Change by Gina Chung

Sticking with the sea but scaling back the sex, this tender, gorgeous debut novel is about a grieving young woman’s bond with a giant Pacific octopus. The octopus, Dolores, is the main character’s last link to her lost father—but their connection is threatened when Dolores is threatened with a sale to a private aquarium. In interviews, Chung has said, “This is a story about love, loss, and cephalopods; things that everyone can relate to.” How true! So wrap your tentacles around this one and enjoy.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael D. Hattem's "The Memory of '76"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Memory of '76: The Revolution in American History by Michael D. Hattem.

About the book, from the publisher:

The surprising history of how Americans have fought over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution for nearly two and a half centuries

Americans agree that their nation’s origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred and fifty years, politicians, political parties, social movements, and ordinary Americans have constantly reimagined the Revolution to fit the times and suit their own agendas.

In this sweeping take on American history, Michael D. Hattem reveals how conflicts over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution—including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—have influenced the most important events and tumultuous periods in the nation’s history; how African Americans, women, and other oppressed groups have shaped the popular memory of the Revolution; and how much of our contemporary memory of the Revolution is a product of Cold War–era propaganda.

By exploring the Revolution’s unique role in American history as a national origin myth, The Memory of ’76 shows how remembering the nation’s founding has often done far more to divide Americans than to unite them, and how revising the past is an important and long-standing American political tradition.

Visit Michael D. Hattem's website.

The Page 99 Test: Past and Prologue.

The Page 99 Test: The Memory of '76.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen top books about Appalachia

In 2020 at Book Riot Kendra Winchester tagged fifteen books in "the rich tradition of Appalachian literature," including:

The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Part true crime, part history, and part memoir, The Third Rainbow Girl follows author Emma Copley Eisenberg as she moves to West Virginia and makes a home for herself. She eventually learns that decades ago in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two girls were murdered. As she follows that case, she weaves in stories from her own experience in Appalachia, skillfully tying together the many threads of this genre-defying book.

Read about another title on the list.

The Third Rainbow Girl is among James Polchin's seven top queer true crime books.

The Page 99 Test: The Third Rainbow Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Frances Kolb Turnbell's "Spanish Louisiana"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Spanish Louisiana: Contest for Borderlands, 1763–1803 by Frances Kolb Turnbell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Frances Kolb Turnbell’s study of Spanish colonial Louisiana is the first comprehensive history of the colony. It emphasizes the Lower Mississippi valley’s status as a borderland contested by empires and the region’s diverse inhabitants in the era of volatility that followed the Seven Years’ War. As Turnbell demonstrates, the Spanish era was characterized by tremendous transition as the colony emerged from the neglect of the French period and became slowly but increasingly centered on plantation agriculture. The transformations of this critical period grew out of the struggles between Spain and Louisiana’s colonists, enslaved people, and Indians over issues related to space and mobility. Many borderland peoples, networks, and alliances sought to preserve Louisiana as a flexible and fluid zone as the colonial government attempted to control and contain the region’s inhabitants for its own purposes through policy and efforts to secure loyalty and its own advantageous alliances.

Turnbell first examines the period from 1763 through the American Revolution, when the Mississippi River was a boundary between empires. The river’s designation as an imperial border ran counter to the topography of North America and counter to the practices of the valley’s inhabitants, who employed its waterways to trade, communicate, migrate, and survive. Turnbell pays special attention to the Revolt of 1768, the burgeoning trade along the Mississippi prior to the American Revolution that involved British and American merchants, Spanish preparation for war, and the crucial involvement of the borderland’s diverse inhabitants as the war played out on the Lower Mississippi.

Turnbell then explains how the activity of borderland peoples evolved after the Revolutionary War when the Lower Mississippi was no longer an imperial boundary. She considers the instability and fluidity of postwar years in Louisiana, American trade and migration, Louisiana’s experience of the Age of Revolutions—from pro-French sentiments to plans for rebellion among the enslaved—and ultimately, Spain’s political demise in the Mississippi River valley.

Learn more about Spanish Louisiana at the LSU Press website.

The Page 99 Test:Spanish Louisiana.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight thrillers and horror novels set at terrible summer camps

Molly Odintz is the managing editor for CrimeReads and the editor of Austin Noir, now available from Akashic Books. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller before becoming a Very Professional Internet Person. She lives in central Texas with her cat, Fritz Lang.

At CrimeReads Odintz tagged eight top thrillers and horror novels set at terrible summer camps, including:

Sami Ellis, Dead Girls Walking

Sapphic romance and serial killers at summer camp! Sami Ellis seems to have included every trope I have on my checklist, and they all work together seamlessly for an irrepressibly entertaining horror experience.

Read about another book on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Dead Girls Walking.

Q&A with Sami Ellis.

--Marshal Zeringue