Jonathan Vankin Books

My employer used to laugh whenever I would mention the existence of vast conspiracies working around us in the world today. Then I lent him this book. Now he merely smiles and nods, with the occasional nervous glance over his shoulder.
Two main sections help deliver tone that exists in the world of conspiracy theory. The first section examines a cross-section of the theorists themselves; from the flaky personalities capitalizing on the public's need to know, to the ordinary people (like you or I) that find themselves sucked into the realm of the unbelievable, the unexplainable, and the unavoidable. The second section then broadsides you with a vast collection of some of the most intense and complicated examples of what conspiracy theory is all about.
The key to this book's success at making you think is that it doesn't pick and choose which plots and cover-ups are real or imagined. Instead, it merely dumps all of the facts and theories right in your lap, leaving you no choice but to decide for yourself what you can or can't dismiss as paranoid folly. Highly recommended for believers & skeptics alike.

This book really makes you wonder about things. It was really fun to read because it gives you an alternative perspective to what you have heard about certain events such as the JFK assassination and UFOs. It has a seriousness about it that makes every conspiracy seem like it definetley was a conspiracy. It was a good book.

This book is as the tile reads.Jonthan Vankin Kenneth M.Currie tell It all.Excellent read.It will open up your mind as to what Is happening In america.And how we the people are being held hostage in our own country.Mind control.Manipulation.We the american people paid with our tax dollars to arm Iraq and other countries.Our hard earned money funded the goverment for the mess this world is In today.When we the american people can not afford health Insurance.Work two jobs to make ends meet.Where is the president in this country? What Is he doing to help us. No jobs, Insurance,Terrosist In our country. We are the second world country not the first.Its not going to get any better.Does the goverment care about us.NO.Do you have a cement building with 23 rooms and hospitals and doctors in It.The govement does. They tell us to go about our lifes.When they have many of body guards that we the people pay for.What a bunck of lies they feed us everyday. Just an american who cares.

Another excellent edition of the DC Comics' Factoid Press "Big Book" series. This one focuses on the bad guys/girls in history, including some real rotters! Excellent entertainment for the whole family!

definitely a great addition to your collection. I can't wait until each new installment is published. Makes you want to look up more information on some of the topics explored within.

From Lady Macbeth to the admittedly lewd practices of the Roman emporers, this book has it all. Where else could one find the full account of Mr. Sawney Beane, the father of an inbred Scottish family who dwelt in coastal cliffs, frequently preying on travelers and eating them? Or the atrocities committed during the Bataan death march? Beautifully - or gruesomely,depending on who you are - illustrated, this book, another masterpiece by Factoid, satisfies that dark sweet tooth in all of us. A must-have for horror hounds and psychofilm buffs.

Another gem from the crown of Paradox Press! This book examines just what it is to be bad. But we don't just see "bad" as evil: we also see "bad" as in "bad taste." Learn how each story needs a bad guy! And you'll also see how history has its share of bad guys as well! It takes good writers and artists to discuss "bad" like this!

The BIG BOOK OF BAD- the 13th book in the series presents an interesting read- until you reach the "Bad Lite" Chapter- after that- it's all downhill. The Editors wasted space in dedicating pages to the likes of "Vanilla Ice" and his Ilk- when they could have put in more of the real BAAAD guys- such as Idi Amin, Ferdinand Marcos, Adolf Hitler, Peter Kurten, Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, Erap Estrada and the like.

Like all the others in the Factoid books line, this book lays out 50-something fairy tales in all their gruesome glory in consice, information-packed comics. The graphic novel-esque medium allows readers to cut to the chase of each tale the way written prose cannot. Highly recommended.

I liked the book a lot, but when I first got it I hadn't paid attention to the fact that it is a graphic novel. I thought there were just illustrations. I wasn't exactly expecting a comic book. The book is very good, and it does have original endings and doesn't edit itself for a "g" rating, that's true. However, some of the stories seem a little rushed, as if there was just not enough room for more detail since they had so much illustration. It was a quick read and it was good, but I'm kind of glad I didn't buy it.

Art by Charles Vess and Colleen Doran are the highlights of this book which doesn't cut the gut from the wild old tales of the Brother's Grimm, but some of the art in this book is pretty awful. When you have 60 cartoonists contributing, naturally, quality will vary. It's great, quick reading, though.

When I bought this book I didn't know what to expect. what I found ws a wonderfully illustrated book full of entertaining and yet horrid storys. If you like Grimm or just plain fairy tales this is the book for you! THere are many storys that have hidden morals and some that aren't hidden at all.

When I started to read this book I couldnt put it down. The tales that it has were so interesting. Its your favorite fairy tales with a twist. I myself wouldnt read it my children even though it says its for the whole family. One of the best out of the big book series.

This is one of the better ones in the Big Book Of Series. It is not a jaw dropper like Big Book of Conspiracies or Big Book of Weird, but it is still a fun read.
I was not born until the 80's, but I thought this book was great. I never knew that Kissinger could be an intresting guy. This is all the cool stuff that you never got to see in That 70's Show. From the Son of Sam murders to the Pet Rock and the Brady Bunch it covers the wackiest decade with some amazing art work.
I just hope they do a Big Book of the 80's some day.

Comic book-style stories explain the fads, events, people, music, sports, and everything else about one of the more colorful decades in history. Trying to cover pet rocks and Viet Nam in the same book leads to some inevitable unevenness, of course, and the serious topics are often trivialized or over-simplified. But there are already many books on Watergate; buy this book to learn about streaking and disco.

Pet Rocks, mood rings, streaking - They're all here. But this book also covers some of the heavier stuff from the "me" decade - politicians, drugs, riots, terrorism - and all very entertainingly. The art, as always, ranges from good to very good, and the writing is mostly sharp.

I did notice a lot of stuff overlooked. We get lots of history of television aimed at the young, but no "All in the Family" or "Mary Tyler Moore". Also, the movie history leaves out disaster flicks, mainstream gore, and so-called "blaxploitation" movies. But that's not really a fault so much as a good excuse for a Volume II.

I put off taking Amazon up on the recommendation to buy this book (i had bought 4 "big books" in the past) I finally ordered it and received it Friday. I got it just in time because TLC ran a 70s special Sunday and FX has started showing 54. So now I can watch and read about the decade I was born in. I am planning on taping both this week when it airs again so I can have a 70s tape to go along with my book. ( Just wish my old beta vcr still worked lol)

This is the latest volume in Paradox Press' excellent Big Books series. It proves to be another winner! It chronicles the Me Decade, and analyzes how it affects society as we know it in this decade. It covers a lot of the wacky memories, like pet rocks, mood rings, and the fashions, plus some of the not-so-wacky memories, like the gasoline shortage and the Iranian hostage crisis. As someone born in the 1970s, I truly enjoyed this. But you don't have to be a child of the '70s to like it too!

I started reading this book back when it was only 50 conspiracy theories and a 4 second appearance on The X Files pretty much sold out the first printing in 3 days. The authors do a wonderful job of sorting through the wild eyed, feverish conspiracy writings and crafting excellent, detailed, knowledgeable overviews. They clearly approach each topic with a healthy degree of skepticism and humor. I mean some of these ideas are so freaky if you don't have a sense of humor, you'd want to beat some of these conspiracy idiots with a hardbound copy of the Illuminatus! trilogy. But they never let their skepticism get in the way of a good story, shall we say.

I heartily recommend this book.

I love to read the whiny babbling of the wingnuts who see "leftist bias" in everything. I guess anyone who is slightly to the left of J. Edgar Hoover or Joe McCarthy is a gosh-darn commie and/or terrorist.

Perhaps if Republicans didn't engage in so much illegal, unethical, un-American activity on behalf of fascism, they wouldn't take up so much space in a book like this. The wingnut concept of "fair and balanced" is a bit like someone saying, "Enough about Ted Bundy's serial murdering - let's talk about how charming he was."

At any rate, I LOVED "60 Greatest Conspiracies..." etc., and now that they're up to 80, I guess it's time for an update. And at the rate that lil' Georgie Bush is going, I'm sure there will be enough material for "90..." in a year or two.

I found this book atrocious. It consists of a few pages (<10) per alleged conspiracy, most of which is vague, unverified, unfulfilling and, at best, slightly informative. Each section is a repackaging of prior speculations, which the authors do not investigate, and to which they add little insight.

Some of it is outright discredited (e.g., the fictional invisible ship!) and some of it is outdated (e.g., the latest Roswell declassifications are not mentioned).

The authors method is to merely repeat others' comments regardless of whether they are reliable, and pass them off without chalenge. Hence, the book does not impart much real knowledge to the reader, even though it seems like it was meant to.

Also, there was little citation, and most of it is old. Looks like the authors did not update the 70 or 60 that were in the original. shoddy!

This review is based on the last edition "The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time," as I have yet to read the new edition. The one star reviewers clearly don't get it or the authors' sense of humor. It is fairly well researched, with every chapter having its own bibliography that lists "Major Sources" used. But, in all honesty, criticizing this book for a lack of research is like criticizing Wes Anderson's movies for not being realistic; you're missing the point entirely if you make such claims. (Anderson wrote and directed Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic, four of the funniest movies you'll ever see.)

The other big complaint is that this is simply a rehash of other works. Again, I can't help but think that those readers are simply missing the point. It was not the authors' intent to do some groundbreaking research into any of these conspiracies. Their goal was to gather all of the research that has been done, synthesize it, and present the available information in an entertaining fashion. Mission accomplished. The authors have a keen sense of just how funny all of this is, as they state in the introduction:

"Just as Henry Kissinger cracks us up every time he intones his shoot-from-the-hip opinions as if he's reading from a stone tablet, we also see a good deal of unintentional humor in the dissenting conspiratorial worldview."

The authors do not claim to believe in all of these conspiracy theories. They are merely presenting them with whatever facts are out there. The ones that have no factual basis are derided for what they are: pure bunkem. Here is a quote from the chapter "Apocalypse at a Glance", where the authors are discussing Richard W. Noone's theory that the world will end on May 5, 2000:

"Though the book jacket claims that "astonishing evidence points to worldwide disaster in our lifetime," said evidence turns out to be culled mostly from fringe scientists such as Emanuel Velikofsky, making it likely that 5/5/2000's major event will be El Torrito's Cinco de Mayo happy hour."

Even the conspiracies that do have some factual basis are treated in tounge-in-cheek fashion. Take this quote from the "October Surprise" chapter:

"Soon the list of attendees was bulging, like the roster at a Shriners' convention. Everyone and his CIA handler had been at the Paris rendezvous, it seemed. Most claimed that French and Israeli intelligence operatives were also on hand to shepherd the clandestine deal and presumably enjoy a buffet style luncheon."

If you don't find those quotes even mildly amusing, then you probably won't enjoy this book. Personally, I love the authors' sense of humor and the fact that they don't take any of this too seriously. That being said, there are some very intriguing chapters here, most notably "The Man Who Got Too Close," about Danny Casolaro, a man whom I had never heard of before. His murder/suicide (it was ruled a suicide but seems more like a murder to this reader) raises some serious questions about just what kind of information he had gathered.

If you believe all of these conspiracy theories, then yes, you are a sucker. But if you're one of those people who thinks there is no such thing as a conspiracy, then you are also a sucker. As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The key is being able to sort the information from the dis-information. This book will help you see what the truth really is, and you'll have a good time doing it.

Pay no attention to the "poorly researched" bad reviews. This is a great read and is well worth the price of admission. I highly recommended this book to anyone who finds the subject matter intriguing and/or entertaining. Just be sure to take it for what it is: an equal parts light hearted and serious look into the world of conspiracy.

I am very pleased with this collection of conspiracy theories. From LSD experiments on US soldiers, to stolen software that tracks your latest Walmart purchase, and bloodless suicides this book tackles them all with intelligence and wit. I would recommend it to all who feel that something is amiss in the top levels of government and the mass media. Be you liberal or conservative; lines of freedom are being crossed, and we have been and are being fed sugar coated half truths or flat out lies by the ones we elect to protect us. Who Really controls them?

As an historian who is also a film buff, I try to be lenient when faced with a movie that bends the facts more than necessary. Anyone who has ever tried to write a screenplay, even one based on a novel much less on a real person's life or a real historical incident (and I have), knows you do indeed have to adapt a story (or real life) to the medium of film -- but there's a limit, and some flicks are just too much to take. The authors, talented entertainment-journalists, know this, for the most part. They obviously loved *Shakespeare in Love* and admit that it stuck close to the exceedingly few facts that are known about Shakespeare; likewise *Girl with a Pearl Earring* (a gorgeous film), since almost nothing is known about Vermeer. And they'll accept the rather minor biographical changes made in *Erin Brockovich* and *Norma Rae* as being simply unavoidable. But they really rake Mel Gibson over the coals (deservedly, I think), both for the perversion of English history committed in *Braveheart* (the Christ-like martyrdom of Wallace, they suggest, was practice for *The Passion*) and for the equally perverted treatment of the American Revolution in *The Patriot* (which pissed off a lot of people on the other side of the Atlantic with its suggestion of Nazi-style behavior on the part of the British). They come down hard on *The Hurricane* for claiming that Carter won fights that he actually lost, merely to reenforce the theme of racism, nor have they anything good to say about *Elizabeth*, the 1998 version, in which Cate Blanchett portrays a young queen so insipidly naive and trusting, "she wouldn't have lasted longer than a fortnight (or whichever ye olde calendar notation ye prefer)" -- in which they'll entirely correct. (I hated that movie.) They don't have much use for Spike Lee's egotism, either, especially in *Malcolm X*. They reserve real venom for the fact that *Amistad* not only jerks history around, the production company, Spielberg's Dreamworks, actually had the nerve to send out study guides to schools promoting wholly made-up characters as actual historical models to be emulated. In other cases, the authors simply wonder why liberties with real people were taken unnecessarily, as in *Seabiscuit* or *The Elephant Man*. Some of the biopics the pair analyze, such as *American Splendor*, probably don't belong here (Harvey Pekar is hardly "historical"), and some, like *Communion* and *The Mothman Prophecies*, don't belong anywhere, but they presumably had to come up with an even hundred. However, the film that led to this book being written is Oliver Stone's *JFK*, the most vilified film ever made -- before it was even released. As the subsequently published "documented screenplay" demonstrates, every voiced opinion in Stone's film came out of forty years of assassination research. "To its critics, *JFK* was a film that offended their deeply held view of the world. Stone questioned their religion." This is a good book to keep at hand while browsing through your DVD collection.

"Based on a True Story" is an immensly enjoyable mini-survey of the "real" story behind many of the fact-based films of our time with particular emphasis placed on how much "fact" there is at each films base. The breezily written accounts of these films are always fun to read and, if they don't "expose" many new factual mis-steps (How many film fans are there who don't already know how "fictional" the purportedly fact-based "A Beautiful Mind" is?)they do offer intelligent, brief, discussions of films that (wonder of wonders!) actually merit them. One major quibble though: For a book that is dedicated to exposing falsehoods in films of all sorts, it perpetuates one of the greatest. This is not the first book that attributes the line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" ("When the legend becomes fact, print the legend") to John Ford. Ford DIRECTED the movie. The screenplay was by James Warner Bellah & Willis Goldbeck, from a story by Dorothy M. Johnson. While it is notoriously hard to tell who did what in a film, one would think that the Screenwriters should at least be credited with the DIALOGUE!

Great book because it gives the other side of the "based on a true story" movie. Makes you look at movies in a different light.

The authors do meticulous research and supply ample source footnotes in their reviews of one hundred movies dating from the seventies to many quite recent releases. Their analysis is so straightforward despite the liberal interjection of sarcasm that it is impossible to conclude that the great majority of Hollywood filmmakers couldn't honor truth if you paid them to, even though in many cases they apparently enjoy pretending to while being paid.

If you are a movie fan and look at cinema as a strong forcefor "truth and beauty" in the world this book will cause you to thing again. Is it possible that all the failed would be blockbusters are an indication that the audience has enough continuous access to viewing video products that even the most uncaring are better able to instinctively sniff out obscured incredibility and turn their noses up?

The fascination with mere flickering images may be over. We will see what happens as the means of production goes all digital and the price of entry into movie making goes down by orders of magnitude. It may be that everyone can get a shot at being a star. We also may be on the receiving end of many opinion pieces masquerading as documentaries. Yes I know, at least Michael Moore cares and believes passionately about his subject matter.

If you really want to hear about an instance of dishonest and ludicrous audience manipulation do an internet search on "lemmings to the sea" and find out about Disney's cruelty and venality in the 1958 production "White Wilderness". Suffice to say that lemmings never hurled themselves off cliffs committing suicide.

Based on a True Story tells the "real facts" behind dozens of movies that are supposedly based on real people and stories - from blockbusters like Erin Brockovich to more obscure films. The stories are often fascinating and revealing. But the authors' analysis often left me frustrated - they obviously give certain films more leeway than others when it comes to bending the truth. One film might ignore inconvenient facts, and it's dismissed as "blatant pandering", but another movie might do something almost identical and it's called "fulfilling the director's vision". It's quite obvious which types of movies the authors like and which ones they don't. I enjoyed the backstories behind the films, but after a while I started skipping over the authors' harangues.

Shame on the people inside this book whose scandalous lives provide such fun reading! By reducing (or is it "elevating") to graphic recreations the misadventures of these celebrities and other assorted famous people who got caught in the act, the authors and artists here provide us with some wickedly delightful re-tellings of the juiciest scandals of the recent past. They're all here!

"The Big Book of Scandal" from Paradox Press digs up all the hottest dirt from the 20th century! Find out that Clinton wasn't the first philandering president! And royal scandals didn't begin under Queen Elizabeth II either! Learn just how Hollywood became Babylon! You won't believe your eyes!

A riotous look at how the mighty fall: Greed, sex, perversion, and fraud. All the things what make people watch the news, and buy papers. The artwork and writing are top notch, as is the right amount of humor in each story.

I was TOTALLY disappointed with this book. When I received it, it was a big comic book! Nothing but comic strips throughout, which is not what I expected. If you feel like reading the comics, pick up your local newspaper, otherwise don't waste your time with this one!

Vankin does a great job of concisely and completely dealing with long forgotten scandals, without too much crossover into his previous books (Conspiracies, Cover Ups and Crimes and 60 Greatest Conspiracies) and he does not pick easy targets. The Lockheed Scandal, the Wilson-Terpil Affair, several minor celebrity sin-fests, even something on tired old Watergate get comicized here. The book focusses on Hollywood, society, political and big business scandals, and so distinquishes itself from the other Big Books--on the unexplained, criminals, martyrs, urban legends, weirdos, losers and freaks. To coin a Vankinish observation, that list looks more like readers than topics the longer it gets. The first book in this series--from Factoid Books, a front for Paradox Press, which is an imprint of DC Comics--was the excellent Big Book of Conspiracies.

An ideal primer for those who don't have the time to read the vast volume of conspiracy literature. This book will not only introduce you to perennial conspiracy favorites involving JFK, the CIA, UFOs, Marilyn Monroe, and Jim Morrison but also more obscure conspiracies. There's that dead reporter in the bathtub. He was working on something called the Octopus file involving stolen software and arms smuggling. And what about those machines in the polling booth? Are they really counting your vote? There's the "Fighting Quaker" who stopped a cabal of American fascists from overthrowing FDR. Who really did the killings at Jonestown? Is fluoride not a plot to steal our precious bodily fluids but to sell us more candy?

You get a briefing on 50 conspiracies and suggestions for further reading, so, the next time someone at a party begins to go on about their favorite conspiracy (and doesn't everyone have at least one?), you'll be able to look them square in the eye and say, "Well, I have a theory

Initial D: vol 9
By: Raul

This book is about a teen named tak, he drives a corolla 1886. Witch is known as the 86 from Mt.Akina. He is a drifter. There is a group called the Emperor's, and they want to take over the drifting seen with there four wheeled drive evo's. Tak is going out with a girl that is getting paid by anther man to go out with and she is getting paid by that same man for sex. She is in love with but she is still with the other man. Tak in the middle of the night he gets a call from someone and tells him she is dating the other man.