This book turned out to be a bit more informative than I anticipated 1/4th of the way through! Conspiracies (or “Samenzweringen”, as I read it, but Goodreads doesn’t show the rad version of the Dutch cover) does a great job roughly sketching out some historically relevant conspiracies & cults. Mass hysteria is a very intriguing topic, and reading about *just* how deep antisemitism goes was a very harrowing experience.

All that being said, this book unfortunately only goes skin deep. It was moreso a list of interesting topics to look up than it was a genuine encyclopedia. In a way, it kind of felt like a collection of back-cover summaries; every entry does the job to get your attention, but it ends once you’re invested, so you’re always left wanting more. I also have a slight hunch that this one worked much better in English than it did in Dutch. From what I can tell Greer has a very appropriately tense writing style that was, unfortunately, lost in translation a little bit.

It’s a 2.5 for me, initially rounded up for the DOPE cover & the fact that every subject on the list was, in fact, a very interesting read (granted I googled it for additional information first) but eventually rounded down for the fact that the book itself didn’t really leave much of an impact & the somewhat lacking translation. Sorry king :(