Conspiracy theories and the people who believe them

"Conspiracy theories ... have always been with us [but] their salience has increased [due to] the increasing access to information among ordinary people, a pervasive sense of powerlessness among those same people, and widespread distrust of elites ... These factors ... are now propelling conspiracy theories into our public sphere on a vast scale ... Scholars have begun to study this genuinely important phenomenon in a concerted way. In this volume [the editor] has gathered forty leading researchers on the topic to provide both the foundationals tools and the evidence to better understand conspiracy theories in the United States and around the world ..."--Back cover