PositiveThe Washington PostDickey vividly retells the histories of many of these conspiratorial fables and offers complex, well-informed analyses ... Dickey follows a straightforward if occasionally sluggish chronology ... Dickey is at his most effective when drawing clear lines between the secret societies of yore and the conspiratorial moment we’re living in today. He vividly describes the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan ... But Dickey’s focus on the United States also means an occasional, and understandable, tendency to make American history slightly too large in the overall history of conspiratorial thinking ... If he doesn’t quite close that loop at first...it’s because he’s busy examining much more obscure and fascinating incidents ... The book comes more fully to life, and shows moments of welcome humor, in its second half ... Dickey’s writing is elegantly thoughtful, sure-footed and occasionally luminous.
