rosedosed's review against another edition
2.0
This book turned out to be a bit more informative than I anticipated 1/4th of the way through! Conspiracies (or “Samenzweringen”, as I read it, but Goodreads doesn’t show the rad version of the Dutch cover) does a great job roughly sketching out some historically relevant conspiracies & cults. Mass hysteria is a very intriguing topic, and reading about *just* how deep antisemitism goes was a very harrowing experience.
All that being said, this book unfortunately only goes skin deep. It was moreso a list of interesting topics to look up than it was a genuine encyclopedia. In a way, it kind of felt like a collection of back-cover summaries; every entry does the job to get your attention, but it ends once you’re invested, so you’re always left wanting more. I also have a slight hunch that this one worked much better in English than it did in Dutch. From what I can tell Greer has a very appropriately tense writing style that was, unfortunately, lost in translation a little bit.
It’s a 2.5 for me, initially rounded up for the DOPE cover & the fact that every subject on the list was, in fact, a very interesting read (granted I googled it for additional information first) but eventually rounded down for the fact that the book itself didn’t really leave much of an impact & the somewhat lacking translation. Sorry king :(
All that being said, this book unfortunately only goes skin deep. It was moreso a list of interesting topics to look up than it was a genuine encyclopedia. In a way, it kind of felt like a collection of back-cover summaries; every entry does the job to get your attention, but it ends once you’re invested, so you’re always left wanting more. I also have a slight hunch that this one worked much better in English than it did in Dutch. From what I can tell Greer has a very appropriately tense writing style that was, unfortunately, lost in translation a little bit.
It’s a 2.5 for me, initially rounded up for the DOPE cover & the fact that every subject on the list was, in fact, a very interesting read (granted I googled it for additional information first) but eventually rounded down for the fact that the book itself didn’t really leave much of an impact & the somewhat lacking translation. Sorry king :(
jordaher's review against another edition
3.0
Could’ve been presented in a manner that motivated the reader to turn the page more. Heavily focused on the secret societies aspect, especially freemasonry. Would’ve enjoyed to see more of the hidden histories.
queen_sara's review against another edition
cover, color scheme, page layout were all very pretty. I felt the information about each conspiracy/group was lacking context and enough detail. Made it hard to follow and stay interested in.
jerbil's review against another edition
3.0
Could’ve been presented in a manner that motivated the reader to turn the page more. Heavily focused on the secret societies aspect, especially freemasonry. Would’ve enjoyed to see more of the hidden histories.
jurassicsnark's review
3.0
I bought it based on the cover which is lovely & it looks great on my shelf. The actual content is fairly light and inconsequential. Focuses on secret societies as opposed to conspiracy theories, the chronological view is pretty interesting but each one only gets one page of surface level information and some are a bit repetetive.
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