A review by spookybeast
The Haunting of Twentieth-Century America by William J. Birnes, Joel Martin

3.0

I'm a skeptic and an atheist. While those aren't the first two adjectives I always choose to describe myself, they are certainly in the top 10. However, I love reading about the occult, the paranormal, and the just plain weird--provided that the authors are entertaining, literate, and perhaps don't take themselves too terribly seriously. So my main complaint about this book was how defensive and self-righteous these authors were without really having any credible substantive evidence; in fact, they frequently seemed to admit that there's no scientific data to support the phenomenon they discuss here but dammit you better believe it's real anyway because debunkers are just a bunch of meanie poo-heads. These guys frequently come off as whiny emo kids when it came time to address challenges to the legitimacy of this stuff. And they have a terrible tendency to proffer a wild and outlandish theory in the form of a hyperbolic line of questioning, immediately followed in the next sentence by (I shit you not, though the emphasis is mine) "Or DO they?"/ "Or DOES it?"/ "Or IS it?"

In short: Nazi time machines? Fucking rad! But don't take it too seriously, guys.