Books You Should Read: Them, by Jon Ronson

So I finally got around to reading Jon Ronson’s second book, Them: Adeventures With Extremists. He’s also the author of The Men Who Stare At Goats, which was made into a mediocre movie a couple years ago.

David Icke’s 5 Most Hilarious Fantasies

So I’ve almost got to the double digits of this column about crackpots and craziness without even having addressed David Icke. He’s probably best known for spreading the idea that European royalty and other powerful elites like George Bush and Boxcar Willie are secretly the descendants of reptilian shape-shifters from another planet who interbred with humans in ancient times to create special bloodlines… Bloodlines of evil! And they eat babies! And stuff. It’s an extension of the Ancient Aliens hypotheses you get from guys like Zecharia Sitchin and Giorgio A. Tsoukalos (who I hear is actually a really nice guy, for what it’s worth) with a little interplanetary erotica thrown in for fun.

If that’s all you’ve heard about David Icke, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that’s not quite the extent of all his crazy ideas. You don’t just put that out there and then spend the rest of your time fishing or writing about architecture. He has several books, some of them very long and all of them just packed to the brim with speculation about the secret motives behind everything from the JFK assassination to Sumerian mythology.