Among The Truthers - Jonathan Kay

The most disappointing part of this book is the part that's not there - the refuting of the claims of 9/11 Truthers. Kay writes around it, mentioning it only once when he offers up an excuse for not including it  - "Debunking books don't sell". This hole transforms the book into a history of conspiracy theories, starting with The Truther Movement, rather than a book singularly about the Truther Movement, making the title a marketing ploy. Given the title a reader expects that the author spends time among 9/11 Truthers and reports back, but we are only offered truncated versions. (Better versions appeared in the National Post when Kay was writing this novel). This 'among the natives' approach was done much better by Matt Taibbi in The Great Derangement, who spends time with the religious right in the US and the 9/11 Truthers and draws connections between the two groups.

You can't go far complaining about a book for what it isn't. This book is a history of conspiracy theories, including the JFK assassination and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the two Rosetta stones of conspiracism.  The parallel between religion and conspiracism is drawn, as is the power of the Internet and video streaming. Overall very nice, but ultimately unsatisfying.