{"title":"Colin Dickey","description":"\u003cp\u003eCheck out these titles from Colin Dickey!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Unidentified\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e was our August 2022 selection\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGhostland\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e was our October 2025 selection\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"replaceable-you-adventures-in-human-anatomy-copy","title":"GHOSTLAND: An American History in Haunted Places","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAvailable to Order: Ships to you in 1–2 weeks (processing + transit time)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFrom the author of The Unidentified, an intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history that takes readers on a road trip through some of the country's most infamously haunted places--and deep into the dark side of our history.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eColin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and \"zombie homes,\" Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as \"the most haunted mansion in America,\" or \"the most haunted prison\"; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living \u003cb\u003e--\u003c\/b\u003ehow do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made \u003cb\u003e--\u003c\/b\u003eand why those changes are made \u003cb\u003e--\u003c\/b\u003eDickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, \u003ci\u003eGhostland\u003c\/i\u003e discovers the past we're most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/redcircle.com\/shows\/17f819be-161a-4326-b504-f9fe87e6dad2\/ep\/adf1bc00-ce6d-41b3-972e-3779c168f7d2\" target=\"_blank\"\u003eListen to the podcast episode here!\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis was our October 2025 pick!\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Morbidly Curious Book Club Online Bookstore","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53444983783791,"sku":null,"price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/3040\/9327\/files\/65.png?v=1788812517"},{"product_id":"under-the-eye-of-power-how-fear-of-secret-societies-shapes-american-democracy","title":"UNDER THE EYE OF POWER: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eAvailable to Order\u003c\/em\u003e: Ships to you in 1–2 weeks (processing + transit time)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom beloved cultural historian and acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eGhostland comes\u003c\/i\u003e a history of America's obsession with secret societies and the conspiracies of hidden power\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe United States was born in paranoia. From the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organized by the French) to the Salem witch trials to the Satanic Panic, the Illuminati, and QAnon, one of the most enduring narratives that defines the United States is simply this: secret groups are conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law. We'd like to assume these panics exist only at the fringes of society, or are unique features of the internet age. But history tells us, in fact, that they are woven into the fabric of American democracy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCultural historian Colin Dickey has built a career studying how our most irrational beliefs reach the mainstream, why, and what they tell us about ourselves. In \u003ci\u003eUnder the Eye of Power\u003c\/i\u003e, Dickey charts the history of America through its paranoias and fears of secret societies, while seeking to explain why so many people--including some of the most powerful people in the country--continue to subscribe to these conspiracy theories. Paradoxically, he finds, belief in the fantastical and conspiratorial can be more soothing than what we fear the most: the chaos and randomness of history, the rising and falling of fortunes in America, and the messiness of democracy. Only in seeing the cycle of this history, Dickey says, can we break it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Morbidly Curious Book Club Online Bookstore","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53474603467119,"sku":null,"price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/3040\/9327\/files\/Websitephotos_48_36d17d28-4ad3-46ef-af95-4046bb2d368d.png?v=1789416111"},{"product_id":"the-unidentified-mythical-monsters-alien-encounters-and-our-obsession-with-the-unexplained","title":"THE UNIDENTIFIED: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAvailable to Order: Ships to you in 1–2 weeks (processing + transit time)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAmerica's favorite cultural historian and author of \u003ci\u003eGhostland\u003c\/i\u003e takes a \"thought-provoking and delicoiusly unsettling\" (\u003ci\u003ePublisher's Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e) tour of the country's most persistent \"unexplained\" phenomena\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational--in fringe--is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEnter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made \u003ci\u003eGhostland\u003c\/i\u003e a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining \"evidence\" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. \u003ci\u003eThe Unidentified\u003c\/i\u003e is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThis was our August 2022 book club pick!\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Morbidly Curious Book Club Online Bookstore","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53474604712303,"sku":null,"price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/3040\/9327\/files\/Websitephotos_49.png?v=1789416309"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0991\/3040\/9327\/collections\/Dickey_Author_Photo_22.webp?v=1789415935","url":"https:\/\/morbidlycuriousbookclub.myshopify.com\/collections\/colin-dickey.oembed","provider":"Morbidly Curious Book Club® | Online Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}