Debunked!: conspiracy theories, urban legends, and evil plots of the 21st century

You know what's really going on, don't you? Flight 93 secretly landed in Cleveland, where the passengers were whisked off to a NASA facility. Nostradamus predicted JFK Jr.'s plane crash, which was engineered by the One World Government. Online poker sites are rigged to knock out the short stacks. Donald Rumsfeld was behind the bird flu panic.

That's what it's like to live inside the mind of the 21st-century conspiracy theorist, who believes that all you have to do is look at the signs and you'll see what's really going on. And thousands if not millions of people actually believe this is the way the world works.

Debunked! is a breezy but fact-filled dissection of more than two dozen of the most popular urban legends and conspiracy theories of the 21st century. As he did in Urban Legends and Hollywood Urban Legends, and as he has done in dozens of columns for the Chicago Sun-Times over the last decade and a half, Richard Roeper lays out the basics of each conspiracy theory, quotes some of the true believers—and then tears the theory apart with his bare hands.

This book will provide you with invaluable ammunition for the next time you communicate with someone from that other, shadow world—that place where secret tribunals pull the strings and influence the outcome of everything from terrorist attacks to professional sporting events.