An enthralling exploration of the most audacious and underhanded deceptions in the history of mankind, from sacred relics to financial schemes to fake art, music, and identities. World history is littered with tall tales and those who have fallen for them. Ian Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, and Peter Nevraumont, an award-winning book producer, have teamed up to create this anti-history of the world, in which Michelangelo fakes a cupid; the holy foreskin is venerated; arctic explorers search for an entrance into a hollow Earth; a woman is elected Pope; and people can survive on only air and sunshine. Told chronologically, HOAX begins with the first documented announcement of the end of the world from 365 AD and winds its way through controversial tales such as the Loch Ness Monster and the Shroud of Turin, past proven fakes such as the Thomas Jefferson's ancient wine and the Davenport Tablets built by a lost race, and explores bald-faced lies in the art world, journalism, and archeology.

How to Make a Movie on a Tight BudgetToday's indie film market is growing by leaps and bounds and filmmaker Rickey Bird and screenwriter and novelist Al Guevara are on a mission to help indie moviemakers everywhere. Bird and Guevara want to show aspiring filmmakers how to overcome common movie and video production problems: Not enough money for crews Over budget and likely making the wrong movie Can't get the attention of an indie studio Should have started with a short film to gain attention Amateur Movie & Video Production. Thousands of aspiring filmmakers are learning how to use cheaper, widely available filmmaking technology, and the craft of making movies from books pulled from bookstore and library shelves. Their work is totally DIY and they are the most creative people you will ever meet. Rickey Bird's Hectic Films is a Southern California enterprise building a filmmaking empire on a budget. His short films, feature films, micro docs and tutorials have landed in some of the biggest American film festivals and been seen online worldwide. The result? Millions of views worth of exposure from films online, in festivals and creative marketing literally on the street. His many projects have seen leading B actors like Hulk Hogan and Vernon Wells (Mad Max Road Warrior), make-up artists from the TV show Grimm, and stuntmen from the Call of Duty games. What you'll learn in this book: How planning and shooting a short film today can lead to a feature-length project tomorrow Everything you need to know about writing a movie project on a burger budget Tips on how to find locations and not get arrested Shooting tips galore for building exciting scenes Sound and film editing tips and all kinds of special effects wizardry, including puppetry Screenings, promotions, and juicy tips on film festival strategy If you liked books such as How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck, The Filmmaker's Handbook, or Rebel Without a Crew, you'll love Cheap Movie Tricks.

Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, "time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers."
Kafka is one of 161 inspired--and inspiring--minds, among them, novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians, who describe how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his "male configurations." . . Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day . . . Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced "every pleasure imaginable."
Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books . . . Karl Marx . . . Woody Allen . . . Agatha Christie . . . George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing . . . Leo Tolstoy . . . Charles Dickens . . . Pablo Picasso . . . George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers . . .
Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to "clear the brain").
Brilliantly compiled and edited, and filled with detail and anecdote, "Daily Rituals "is irresistible, addictive, magically inspiring.

Many thousands of years ago, a group of extraterrestrials from another planet guided the evolution of life on Earth--determining the existence and nature of humankind as we know it today. How did the master builders from the stars construct the miracle called man? Is the DNA that is at the core of all life in the universe a "cosmic code" that links Earth to heaven and man to God?

In this sixth volume of The Earth Chronicles, Zecharia Sitchin unveils writings from the past to decipher prophesies, and reveals how the DNA-matched Hebrew alphabet and the numerical values of its letters serve as a code that bares the secrets of mortal man's fate and mankind's celestial destiny.

The Great Silence explores the multifaceted problem named after the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and his legendary 1950 lunchtime question "Where is everybody?" In many respects, Fermi's paradox is the richest and the most challenging problem for the entire field of astrobiology and the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) studies. This book shows how Fermi's paradox is intricately connected with many fields of learning, technology, arts, and even everyday life. It aims to establish the strongest possible version of the problem, to dispel many related confusions, obfuscations, and prejudices, as well as to offer a novel point of entry to the many solutions proposed in existing literature. Cirkovic argues that any evolutionary worldview cannot avoid resolving the Great Silence problem in one guise or another.

Did Rasputin, the mad monk of Tsarist Russia, possess supernatural powers? Who was the mysterious prisoner in the Bastille who has gone down in history as "The Man in the Iron Mask"? Did he possess a priceless secret which Louis XIV desperately wanted to learn? Victorian Britain was terrorized by a weird super-athlete known to the popular press of those days as "Spring-heeled Jack." Was he just an eccentric gymnast, or could he have been an alien? Who or what was the mysterious man known as the Count of St. Germain whose abnormal powers seemed to defy both time and space – and is he still with us today? What strange powers of prophecy did Coinneach Odhar, the famous Brahan Seer, really possess? Was Bérenger Sauniëre, the enigmatic Priest of Rennes-Le-Château, one of the last guardians of a secret older than the Sphinx? Could the sinister Aleister Crowley have been merely a pathetic victim of self-deception and his own inflated ego, or did he really possess magical powers? What amazing secrets did electrical engineer Nikola Tesla control? Gurdjieff – one of the most amazing men of his time – has never been fully understood: what was the true meaning behind his strangely ambivalent messages? Was Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky a genius with strange paranormal powers, or merely a charlatan and a sensation-seeker? Francis Dashwood of Medmenham Abbey, leader of a sect of the wildest debauchees who roared their way across the eighteenth century, was an expert in the Black Arts. All of these strange, mysterious, and intriguing characters – and many others – are described, examined, and analyzed in The World’s Most Mysterious People. This is a collection of remarkable and mysterious people, from all ages and places – including our own. Some the authors have met, others were researched carefully from reliable archives. Some are Canadian, others are from the US, the UK, and all over the world. All are mysterious; all are intriguing; all are worth studying. Can anyone learn to use mysterious powers like theirs? To update what a great thinker once said: "The proper study of people is other human beings." And the more mysterious those human beings are, the more we shall learn from studying them.

Physicist and Oxford educated historian Joseph P. Farrell continues his best-selling series of exposs on secret Nazi technology, Nazi survival, and post-war Nazi manipulation of various manufacturing technologies, economies and whole countries. Beginning with pre-War corporate partnerships in the USA, including the Bush family, he moves on to the surrender of Nazi Germany, and evacuation plans of the Germans. He then covers the vast, and still-little-known recreation of Nazi Germany in South America with help of Juan Peron, I.G. Farben and Martin Bormann. Farrell then covers Nazi Germany's Penetration of the Muslim World including Wilhelm Voss and Otto Skorzeny in Gamel Abdul Nasser's Egypt before moving onto the development and control of New Energy Technologies including the Bariloche Fusion Project, Dr. Philo Farnsworth's Plasmator, and the Work of Dr. Nikolai Kozyrev. Finally, Farrell discusses the Nazi desire to control space, and examines their connection with NASA, the esoteric meaning of NASA Mission Patches, plus final chapters on: Alchemy, Esotericism, The SS and the Unified Field Theory Craze; 1943-1945: Strange Events from the end of World War II and other "Postwar Shenanigans." This book is literally packed with information.

'My favourite author has done it again. Numbers Don't Lie is by far his most accessible book to date, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about the world. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning' Bill Gates Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy? From Earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking. Smil is on a mission to make facts matter, because after all, numbers may not lie, but which truth do they convey? 'Smil's title says it all: to understand the world, you need to follow the trendlines, not the headlines. This is a compelling, fascinating, and most important, realistic portrait of the world and where it's going' Steven Pinker 'The best book to read to better understand our world. It should be on every bookshelf!' Linda Yueh 'There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil' Guardian Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of over forty books on topics including energy, environmental and population change, food production and nutrition, technical innovation, risk assessment and public policy. No other living scientist has had more books (on a wide variety of topics) reviewed in Nature. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, in 2010 he was named by Foreign Policy as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. This is his first book for a more general readership.

Princess Diana, Jackie O, Grace Kelly-the star icon is the most talked about yet least understood persona. The object of adoration, fantasy, and cult obsession, the star icon is a celebrity, yet she is also something more: a dazzling figure at the center of a media pantomime that is at once voyeuristic and zealously guarded. With skill and humor, Daniel Herwitz pokes at the gears of the celebrity-making machine, recruiting a philosopher's interest in the media, an eye for society, and a love of popular culture to divine our yearning for these iconic figures and the role they play in our lives. Herwitz portrays the star icon as caught between transcendence and trauma. An effervescent being living on a distant, exalted planet, the star icon is also a melodramatic heroine desperate to escape her life and the ever-watchful eye of the media. The public buoys her up and then eagerly watches her fall, her collapse providing a satisfying conclusion to a story sensationally told-while leaving the public yearning for a rebirth. Herwitz locates this double life in the opposing tensions of film, television, religion, and consumer culture, offering fresh perspectives on these subjects while ingeniously mapping society's creation (and destruction) of these special aesthetic stars. Herwitz has a soft spot for popular culture yet remains deeply skeptical of public illusion. He worries that the media distances us from even minimal insight into those who are transfigured into star icons. It also blinds us to the shaping of our political present.

Seeking the truth about UFOs in America, Mark Pilkington and John Lundberg uncover a 60 year-old story stranger than any conspiracy thriller. Through the fascinating account of their quest Mark Pilkington reveals the long history of UFOria and its parallels in little known tales from the murky worlds of espionage, psychological warfare and advanced military technology. Along the way he discovers that the truth about flying saucers is stranger and more complex than either the ufologists or debunkers would have us believe. As he crossed the US meeting intelligence agents, disinformation specialists and UFO hunters Pilkington was confronted with a dizzying array of ever more outrageous claims and counter claims. As a result he began to suspect that, instead of covering up stories of crashed flying saucers, alien contacts and secret underground bases, the US intelligence agencies had actually been promoting them all along. Meanwhile he has to deal with his own uncertainties, the suspicions of the UFO community and a partner who is starting to believe that conspiracy theorists might be right after all. With a fresh, funny and objective approach, Pilkington is the ideal guide to steer us through these strange territories, where nothing is quite as it seems and reality is just a matter of managing perceptions.

In 1968 University of California Press published an unusual manuscript by an anthropology student named Carlos Castaneda. The Teachings of Don Juan enthralled a generation of seekers dissatisfied with the limitations of the Western world view. Castaneda's now classic book remains controversial for the alternative way of seeing that it presents and the revolution in cognition it demands. Whether read as ethnographic fact or creative fiction, it is the story of a remarkable journey that has left an indelible impression on the life of more than a million readers around the world.

The official Air Technical Intelligence Center reports of their findings, many details from which are revealed for the first time, contain some completely baffling detailed accounts of UFO sightings by thoroughly reliable witnesses. these are the complete official accounts of the classic cases, as well as a wealth of less-publicized but equally amazing incidents. While others who have written books and articles on UFOs imply that they were conferring with officials in the inner sanctum, Mr. Ruppelt, as this fascinating book makes clear, was the inner sanctum.

Hailed by Sports Illustrated as the "Edward Gibbon of baseball history," Harold Seymour is the first professional historian to produce an authoritative, multivolume chronicle of America's national pastime. The first two volumes of this study--The Early Years and The Golden Age--won universal acclaim. The New York Times wrote that they "will grip every American who has invested part of his youth and dreams in the sport," while The Boston Globe called them "irresistible."

Now, in The People's Game, Seymour offers the first book devoted entirely to the history of the game outside of the professional leagues, revealing how, from its early beginnings up to World War II, baseball truly became the great American pastime. He explores the bond between baseball and boys through the decades, the game's place in institutions from colleges to prisons to the armed forces, the rise of women's baseball that coincided with nineteenth century feminism, and the struggles of black players and clubs from the later years of slavery up to the Second World War.

Whether discussing the birth of softball or the origins of the seventh inning stretch, Dr. Seymour enriches his extensive research with fascinating details and entertaining anecdotes as well as his own wealth of baseball experience. The People's Game brings to life the central role of baseball for generations of Americans.

Misinformation has had dramatic and dangerous effects, as evidenced by numerous events of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Reading a steady stream of misinformation leads to distrust, potentially leading to conflict in one's family and workplace, and even to civil unrest. At the heart of many such matters is scientific illiteracy. Many people enjoy a life of ease and convenience because of science-and since science also crosses courtrooms, classrooms and cultures, it has great potential to debunk misinformation and untangle the confusion on such issues as vaccines, sexual identity, race and evolution, alternative medicine, and human reproduction. This book addresses those issues and the popular stories, conspiracies, and misleading headlines that circulate across media platforms. Bringing accurate knowledge into people's agendas is challenging, and this book uses science and facts as a basis of every deliberation over laws and policies. The chapters weave together history, politics, human biology, and law, and demonstrate how our lives are dependent on understanding the nature of things.

The untold account of the countless Americans who believe in, or personally experience, paranormal phenomena such as ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs and psychics Given the popularity of television shows such as Finding Bigfoot, Ghost Hunters, Supernatural, and American Horror Story, there seems to be an insatiable public hunger for mystical happenings. But who believes in the paranormal? Based on extensive research and their own unique personal experiences, Christopher Bader, Joseph Baker and Carson Mencken reveal that a significant number of Americans hold these beliefs, and that for better or worse, we undoubtedly live in a paranormal America. Readers will join the authors as they participate in psychic and palm readings, and have their auras photographed, join a Bigfoot hunt, follow a group of celebrity ghost hunters as they investigate claims of a haunted classroom, and visit a support group for alien abductees. The second edition includes new and updated research based on findings from the Baylor Religion survey regarding America's relationship with the paranormal. Drawing on these diverse and compelling sources of data, the book offers an engaging account of the social, personal, and statistical stories of American paranormal beliefs and experiences. It examines topics such as the popularity of paranormal beliefs in the United States, the ways in which these beliefs relate to each other, whether paranormal beliefs will give rise to a new religion, and how believers in the paranormal differ from "average" Americans. Brimming with fascinating anecdotes and provocative new findings, Paranormal America offers an entertaining yet authoritative examination of a growing segment of American religious culture.

The essays in this book examine the arguments and rhetoric used by the United States and the USSR following two catastrophes that impacted both countries, as blame is cast and consequences are debated. In this environment, it was perhaps inevitable that conspiracy theories would arise, especially about the downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 over the Sea of Japan. Those theories are examined, resulting in at least one method for addressing conspiracy arguments. In the case of Chernobyl, the disaster ruptured the "social compact" between the Soviet government and the people; efforts to overcome the resulting disillusionment quickly became the focus of state efforts.

Conspiracy theory and American foreign policy examines the relationship between secrecy, power and interpretation around international controversy, where foreign policy orthodoxy comes up hard against alternative interpretations. It does so in the context of US foreign policy during the War on Terror, a conflict that was covert and conspiratorial to its core. Offering a new dimension to debates on post-truth politics, this book critically examines the 'Arab-Muslim paranoia narrative': the view that Arab-Muslim resentment towards America is motivated to some degree by a paranoid perception of American power in the Middle East. This narrative is traced from its roots in a post-War liberal understanding of populism through to foreign policy debates about the origins of 9/11, to the strategic heart of the Bush Administration's War of Ideas. Balancing conceptual innovation with detailed case analysis, Aistrope provides a window into the ideological commitments of the US War on Terror. Offering a fascinating insight into conspiracy and paranoia, this book is essential reading for those interested in the relationship between secrecy, power, and contemporary politics. -- .

For forty years and in nine previous books, scholar and religious commentator Tom Harpur has challenged church orthodoxy and guided thousands of readers on subjects as controversial as the true nature of Christ and life after death. Now, in his most radical and groundbreaking work, Harpur digs deep into the origins of Christianity. What he has discovered will have a profound effect on the way we think about religion.
Long before the advent of Jesus Christ, the Egyptians and other peoples believed in the coming of a messiah, a madonna and her child, a virgin birth, and the incarnation of the spirit in flesh. The early Christian church accepted these ancient truths as the very tenets of Christianity but disavowed their origins. What began as a universal belief system based on myth and allegory became instead, in the third and fourth centuries A.D., a ritualistic institution headed by ultraconservative literalists. "The transcendent meaning of glorious myths and symbols was reduced to miraculous, quite unbelievable events. The truth that Christ was to come in man, that the Christ principle was potentially in each of us, was changed to the exclusivist teaching that the Christ had come as a man."
Harpur's message is clear: Our blind faith in literalism is killing Christianity. Only with a return to an inclusive religion will we gain a true understanding of who we are and who we are intended to become. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Gerald Massey and Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Tom Harpur has written a book of rare insight and power.

American society has changed dramatically since A Culture of Conspiracy was first published in 2001. In this revised and expanded edition, Michael Barkun delves deeper into America's conspiracy sub-culture, exploring the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories, the "birther" controversy surrounding Barack Obama's American citizenship, and how the conspiracy landscape has changed with the rise of the Internet and other new media. What do UFO believers, Christian millennialists, and right-wing conspiracy theorists have in common? According to Michael Barkun in this fascinating yet disturbing book, quite a lot. It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 terrorist attacks have all generated elaborate stories of hidden plots. What is far less known is the extent to which conspiracist worldviews have recently become linked in strange and unpredictable ways with other "fringe" notions such as a belief in UFOs, Nostradamus, and the Illuminati. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread ideas, Barkun shows how this web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. This book, written by a leading expert on the subject, is the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of contemporary American conspiracism to date. Barkun discusses a range of material-involving inner-earth caves, government black helicopters, alien abductions, secret New World Order cabals, and much more-that few realize exists in our culture. Looking closely at the manifestations of these ideas in a wide range of literature and source material from religious and political literature, to New Age and UFO publications, to popular culture phenomena such as The X-Files, and to websites, radio programs, and more, Barkun finds that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millenarian activity. His book underscores the importance of understanding why this phenomenon is now spreading into more mainstream segments of American culture.

FICTION / MYTHOLOGYWill the past become our future? Is humankind destined to repeat the events that occurred on another planet, far away from Earth? Zecharia Sitchin's bestselling series, The Earth Chronicles, provided humanity's side of the story--as recorded on ancient clay tablets and other Sumerian artifacts--concerning our origins at the hands of the Anunnaki, "those who from heaven to earth came." In The Lost Book of Enki, we can view this saga from a different perspective through this richly conceived autobiographical account of Lord Enki, an Anunnaki god, who tells the story of these extraterrestrials' arrival on Earth from the 12th planet, Nibiru. The object of their colonization: gold to replenish the dying atmosphere of their home planet. Finding this precious metal results in the Anunnaki creation of homo sapiens--the human race--to mine this important resource. In his previous works, Sitchin compiled the complete story of the Anunnaki's impact on human civilization in peacetime and in war from the fragments scattered throughout Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite, Egyptian, Canaanite, and Hebrew sources--the "myths" of all ancient peoples in the old world as well as the new. Missing from these accounts, however, was the perspective of the Anunnaki themselves. What was life like on their own planet? What motives propelled them to settle on Earth--and what drove them from their new home? Convinced of the existence of a now lost book that formed the basis of ancient Sumerian texts holding the answers to these questions, the author began his search for evidence. Through exhaustive research of primary sources, he has here re-created tales as the memoirs of Enki, the leader of these first "astronauts." What takes shape is the story of a world of mounting tensions, deep rivalries, and sophisticated scientific knowledge that is only today being confirmed. An epic tale of gods and men unfolds, challenging every assumption we hold about our creation, our past, and our future. An eminent Orientalist and Biblical scholar, ZECHARIA SITCHIN is distinguished by his ability to translate ancient Sumerian and other ancient texts. He is a graduate of the University of London and worked as a journalist and editor in Israel for many years. He now lives and writes in New York

Popular Lost Cities author David Childress opens the door to the amazing world of ancient technology, from the computers of ancient world to the "flying machines of the gods." Technology of the Gods explores the technology that was allegedly used in Atlantis and the theory the Great Pyramid of Egypt was originally a gigantic power station. Childress also uncovers many other mysteries, including:
-- the technology of ancient flight
-- how the ancients used electricity
-- megalithic building techniques
-- the use of crystal lenses and the fire from the gods
-- ancient evidence of high-tech weapons, including atomic weapons
-- the role of modern inventors, such as Nikola Tesla, in bringing ancient technology into modern use
-- impossible artifacts, and more, much more.

Childress has done it again! From beginning to end, Technology of the Gods is filled with facts, keen observations and tales that challenge modern assumptions in a humorous, intelligent and compelling way that is quintessential Childress.

A unique contribution to the study of the UFOs, originally published over 30 years ago, this updated edition includes new photographs and illustrations, and an extensive Foreword by David Hatcher Childress discussing more recent Underwater UFOs - now called USOs - Unidentified Submersible Objects. In the last 30 years, new sightings have occurred and new information on old sightings has come forth through the Freedom of Information Acts in the USA, Britain and Australia. These curious incidents during official military manoeuvres raise many questions: Do the British and Americans have underwater military bases capable of launching UFOs? Could the ultimate docking stations for some of the UFOs seen constantly around the world be deep in our oceans? Could these still-operational underwater docking bases have been built in our distant past by extraterrestrials? Sanderson chronicles hundreds of curious unidentified underwater object incidents, many which emerge from the water to fly through the air, and draws some startling conclusions.