I LOVE Brad Meltzer’s thrillers! While I am not into conspiracy theories, Meltzer provides history lessons presented with thorough research. I enjoyed learning about historical events I had never even heard of before! My favorites were the John Wilkes Booth and JFK Assassination, I thought I had known about these events, but Meltzer blew my knowledge away!

I love conspiracy theories, not quite sure why, just find them greatly entertaining. And I’ve heard about Meltzer, so when this book turned up on Netgalley, I figured I’ll check it out. And sure enough, fun was had. Albeit qualified sort of fun. Meltzer is quite a character, his bio itself reads like one of his books and his books read like those popular historical based or at least inspired mysteries that often climb to the top on the bestseller lists. And then he also does nonfiction of the same flavor and tv presentations. This book is essentially a reader’s digest’s style adaptation of his show Decoded. In fact, the chapters read very much like scripts. They are meant to grab your attention. It requires a very specific sort of energy and uses phrases like…What if I someone told you…followed by a doozy of a scenario that Meltzer and his intrepid team of investigators sets off to investigate. So as a result this book reads kind of like…National Treasure the movie. Not just the same manic energy of the movie, but in fact the very same manic energy of the every manically energetic Nicholas Cage. Cage can totally do this show, I bet. Then again he’d probably end up trying to buy some of these treasures. Anyway...thing is, it’s fun. National Treasure was fun. Sure, it’s speculative, but there seem to be an actually good amount of research going into the proof or debunking of this tall and otherwise tales. And it is ever so entertaining to speculate and ever so easy to imagine the government lying to is people. Especially nowadays, it’s practically de rigueur. Though to be fair, it’s nothing new, only now technology has made it so much easier, thanks Twitter and co. So 10 greatest conspiracies seem to be selected by the readers or show watchers, which is to say eight of them are all from American’s past and only two go internationally. And they are most or all (depends of how much you’re into this sort of thing) are familiar sounding, from aliens to assassinations. But still, it was interesting to check out the research that went into this trademark decoding (boy does he love this word) and check out different takes and ideas of the well known scenarios. In the end, it’s probably one of those things where those who wants to believe do and those on the opposite side of the spectrum will find a way not to and facts will only matter so much. But for all those inbetweeners, people who can actually be swayed by facts and research, people who might not take a stand, but actively question things…well, then, read this book and experiment in uncertainty. Yes, it’s popscience and yes it is at times dumbed down for the general population and has a very aha, what do you think of this, check this out, jump out pf the bushes and yell surprise kind of blatant reader grabs, but stunt tactics aside, there is enough meat on these bones to warrant your time. It isn’t even that much time, the book is relatively short and reads quickly. It has a terrific amount of photos too. That was actually the main detractor for me in reading this as an ARC, due to the large amount of supplemental materials (photos, etc.) the book was horrendously disorientingly misformated. Normally I love photos in nonfiction books and this one actually had an excellent amount of those, but for some reason it crippled the digital advance copy version and really affected the reading enjoyment of this book. I never understand why publishers do that. The goal of these promo copies, much like with any sample, is to gather early reviews and get some buzz and demand going for whatever you’re selling, so wouldn’t you want to present the best possible version of your product? Why make the readers go through the labyrinths of crap formats? Yes, it’s free, but sometimes it isn’t even worth it. Plus it detracts from the reading experience and can affect the overall review. Where’s the logic is that? Seriously…what gives? Much like most conspiracy theories out there…it remains a mystery. So maybe wait to read the properly formatted version of this book. But other than that, fun was had, definitely. Thanks Netgalley.

Why are we so obsessed by significant historical events, even those that appear to have been solved? Who hasn’t puzzled what really happened to JFK. Did a strange and lonely loser really manager to kill the president of the United States on his own, or did he have help? What about Area 51? Most of us laugh off the ideas of the government hiding a crashed space ship and alien remains. But the questions remain because that base seems to have more security than the White House. My father-in-law told me when he was stationed at a nearby base, he made a joke about Area 51 and was told to never speak of the site again. Ridiculous, silly? Maybe, but as humans we want to find order in chaos and until we do, we will always find conspiracies to puzzle over, real or not