{"product_id":"off-the-edge-flat-earthers-conspiracy-culture-and-why-people-will-believe-anything-9781643750682","title":"Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything","description":"Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a nearly two-hundred-year-old delusion--the idea that we all live on a flat plane, under a solid dome, ringed by an impossible wall of ice. It is the ultimate in conspiracy theories, a wholesale rejection of everything we know to be true about the world in which we live. Where did this idea come from? Weill draws a straight line from today's conspiratorial moment back to the early days of Flat Earth theory in the 1830s, showing the human impulses behind divergences in belief. Faced with a complicated world out of our individual control, we naturally seek patterns to explain the inexplicable. The only difference between then and now? Social media. And, powered by Facebook and YouTube algorithms, the Flat Earth movement is growing. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e At once a definitive history of the movement and a readable look at its expansive, absurd, and dangerous present, \u003ci\u003eOff the Edge\u003c\/i\u003e introduces us to a cast of larger-than-life characters, from 19th-century grifters to 20th-century small-town tyrants to the provocateurs of Alex Jones's early-aughts internet, whose rancor sowed the early seeds of our modern division. We accompany Weill to Flat Earther conferences, where we meet moms on vacation, determined creationists, scammy YouTube celebrities and their victims, neo-Nazi rappers, and even a man determined to fly into space in a homemade rocket-powered balloon--whose tragic death proves as senseless and absurd as the theory he set out to prove. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Incisive and clear-eyed, \u003ci\u003eOff the Edge \u003c\/i\u003etells a powerful story about belief, exploring how we arrived at this moment of polarized realities and explaining what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Algonquin Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/22\/2022\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781643750682\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 256\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 11\/08\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/01\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e 01\/01\/2022 pg. 78\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Kelly Weill","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41574579175605,"sku":"9781643750682","price":23.76,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_afb273db-9b5f-4e7e-8fa8-06e16bedaee5.jpg?v=1643696269","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/off-the-edge-flat-earthers-conspiracy-culture-and-why-people-will-believe-anything-9781643750682","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}