Jon Ronson_31

I'm a fan of journalist Jon Ronson, so 'Them: Adventures with Extremists' was a welcome gift from the Street Library gods. Ronson's 'So You've been Publicly Shamed' (about the fallout from social media pile-ons) was brilliant, as was podcast series 'The Butterfly Effect' (about the porn industry). Ronson is the kind of gonzo journalist who puts himself into his investigations, brilliant but apparently bumbling, faux-naive but genuinely curious, and is invited right into the heart of the story. 

For 'Them' Ronson rides along with extremists of all stripes—Islamic fundamentalist Omar Bakri, separatist Randy Weaver, radical Protestant Dr Ian Paisley and assorted militia leaders, Klansmen and neo-Nazis. 'Them' is a book about conspiracy theorists and one central conspiracy—that of "the New World Order, an internationalist Western conspiracy conducted by a tiny, secretive elite..." AKA "a mystical cabal conspiring to establish a European superstate and, ultimately, a nefarious world government"—which sounds like a cool narrative device for a book of amusing essays about crazy people, and is, until Ronson actually meets the secretive elite at the Bilderberg Group's Bohemian Grove conference and it all seems very plausible indeed. 

> http://www.jonronson.com/