In some ways, it is not surprising that people are often attracted to conspiracy theories. They are exciting stories that provide the thrill of taboo knowledge; they are sometimes amenable to ironic humor; and they are a staple of popular culture.

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So when a student approaches you about the Illuminati, false flags, or the breaching of the levees during Hurricane Katrina, do not roll your eyes, scoff, or condescend; instead, speak with them about the Counter-Enlightenment, Operation Northwoods, and the Mississippi River flood of 1927. Consider it a teaching moment, an opportunity to inculcate critical-thinking skills—a historical variant of what Muirhead and Rosenblum call "politics as pedagogy" (159)—that might help prevent them from falling deeper into the rabbit hole.

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Historians need to take these ideas more seriously in order to combat the incremental and insidious growth of conspiracy theories that frequently rely on deeply mistaken views of past events and the ways that history unfolds. To date, it is as if historians have been afraid to dignify conspiracy theories with their attention, but they are clearly a neglected feature of American political history, and ignoring them will not make them go away.

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From that point forward, Konda describes the meandering but interconnected paths of American conspiracism in fascinating detail, based on his impressive work in the books and pamphlets that these theorists produced. He also tracks their rivalries, disputes, and common influences. If you want to understand the relationships between the Christian Identity movement and the Aryan Nations, or to follow the ebb and flow of American antisemitism, and how these and many others were bound up with conspiracist ideas, you need look no further.

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Karen M. Douglas (the most prolific psychologist of conspiracism) notes that while much of that discipline has moved away from "personality factors" associated with conspiracy theorizing (Uscinski 245), they still tend to find that conspiratorial predilections correspond to attributes associated with individuals who "dislike outsiders," "prefer convention and tradition to new ideas," and "accuse minorities and deviant groups of secretive plots to destroy society."

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Religious studies scholars see parallels between conspiratorial and fundamentalist religious beliefs in terms of "narrative structure, cognitive and psychological mechanisms, group dynamics, and even social demographics" (Robertson and Dyrendal, in Uscinski, 419).