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Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy And Power In American Culture

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Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and power in American culture is a book that analyzes conspiracy theories and how they affect life in America. This book was written by Mark Fenster who is a professor at the University of Florida Law School. He graduated from several schools with several different degrees. These are a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph. D. from the University of illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the institute of Communications Research, M.A., University of Texas at Austin, Department of Radio/television, film, and a B.A. from the University of Virginia. This book was the first book Fenster ever wrote, but is said to have helped establish the cultural study of conspiracy theory. This book has also been quoted by many scholars. This book analyzes different conspiracy theories in our society. Some examples that the book features are the very popular 9/11 conspiracy theories and even stories of different christian conspiracy theories. Fenster explains many different type of conspiracy theories that come about from people. Some can be a little crazy such as the one that planes never actually hit the twin towers and that they …show more content…
Fenster broke up the book into 3 main parts. These main parts are: Conspiracy as Politics, Conspiracy as Cultural Practice, and Conspiracy Communities. This is nice because if the reader wants to read about a specific topic, then they can easily find it in the book. This book is very interesting, but may be slightly confusing for some readers. Fenster tends to use more advanced vocabulary, but that may not be a big deal for everyone. The way he explains things really captures the reader’s attention. In the book he wrote things such as “Imagine this process, with Deleuze and Guattari…” which of course as Fenster states, makes the reader imagine it and provides imagery to the book and for the reader. Making the reader actually think about what the author is writing can really make them

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