Aliens. Ley lines. Water dowsing. Conspiracies and myths captivate imaginations and promise mystery and magic. Whether it's arguing about the moon landing hoax or a Frisbee-like Earth drifting through space, when held up to science and critical thinking, these ideas fall flat. In Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet, Donald R. Prothero demystifies these conspiracies and offers answers to some of humanity's most outlandish questions. Applying his extensive scientific knowledge, Prothero corrects misinformation that con artists and quacks use to hoodwink others about geology-hollow earth, expanding earth, and bizarre earthquakes-and mystical and paranormal happenings-healing crystals, alien landings, and the gates of hell. By deconstructing wild claims such as prophesies of imminent natural disasters, Prothero provides a way for everyone to recognize dubious assertions. Prothero answers these claims with facts, offering historical and scientific context in a light-hearted manner that is accessible to everyone, no matter their background. With a careful layering of evidence in geology, archaeology, and biblical and historical records, Prothero's Weird Earth examines each conspiracy and myth and leaves no question unanswered.

"The Verdict of the VERSAILLES TREATY that Germany and her allies were responsible for the War, in view of the evidence now available, is historically unsound. It should therefore be revised." These are the words of Sidney Bradshaw Fay, noted revisionist historian, on the concluding page of his magisterial Origins of the World War, published in 1928. We now know more about the Great War than merely its origins. We now know that Great Britain's first act of war on 4 August 1914 was to cut the two trans-Atlantic cables that connected Berlin to New York City. We now know that America's professed neutrality in the early years of the conflict was a hoax. We now know that the Cunard passenger liner RMS Lusitania doubled as a munitions ship, and purposefully steamed into harm's way in May 1915. We now know that the alleged atrocities by the German army in Belgium were all lies. We now know that the British organized a massive, covert propaganda apparatus with the goal of dragging America into the war on the side of the Allies. And we now also know that America's involvement in 1917 as a belligerent in Europe was a tragic misstep by anglophile Woodrow Wilson, that had profound implications not only for the United States but for Europe as well, ensuring an even more catastrophic reprise in 1939. Wilson himself declared, "We all know that this was a commercial war," in September 1919. In April 1937, on the 20th anniversary of America's entry into the war, a Gallup Poll found that 70 percent of respondents thought "it was a mistake for the United States to have entered the Great War." Dr. George Gallup himself declared that "this conviction has been the great master principle of the post-war period in the United States". The lesson is forgotten, propaganda for war repeats, and history repeats. The majorities supporting an invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned two years later to 60 percent opposition to the war...a lesson learned too late again.