
Under the Eye of Power
How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy
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Narrated by:
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Will Damron
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By:
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Colin Dickey
From beloved cultural historian and acclaimed author of Ghostland comes a history of America's obsession with secret societies and the conspiracies of hidden power
The 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.
Cultural 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 Under the Eye of Power, 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.
©2023 Colin Dickey (P)2023 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“A vivid and intriguing recontextualization of a misunderstood aspect of American history.” --Publishers Weekly *Starred Review*
"The author of Ghostland and The Unidentified returns with a colorful history of conspiracy theories in the U.S...In an engrossing narrative, Dickey explains how the human search for purpose can become comical, weird, and/or dark." --Kirkus Reviews
"Roaming from the Freemasons to QAnon, this tour of American moral panics amid social upheaval and downturn is a bracing reminder that conspiratorial thinking is nothing new."--New York Times Book Review's "Editors' Choice"
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Worth the “read”
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Humans have always looked to some unseen element to explain either catastrophe or 'the other.'
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Very well researched. Very informative.
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I was a bit disappointed by the very plainly one-sided political views offered, and that the conspiracies presented, particularly those centered around recent political events, were almost always attributed to bigotry. That argument is getting very stale, and if the author were to look a little more closely at it he may see that explanation itself fits nicely into his own definition of a what a conspiracy theory is.
There are several excellent authors that present information without leading in one direction or other on the political spectrum. I would love to see this subject approached in the same manner.
Very biased
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