If the author had truly been serious about writing an overview of conspiracies, he might have left behind the large package of straw men gathered in this book ... [and] instead chosen from any number of real historical events, such as the 1846 invasion of Mexico led by Zachary Taylor, the 1898 bombing of the Maine leading to the Spanish-American War, Operation Paperclip, Operation Gladio, the Manhattan Project, the coup of Salvador Allende, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Iran Contra ... there are endless examples, of which these are but a few, writes Joseph Green.

There is an almost pathological use of conditionals; may have, perhaps, could have, if, etc. Conversely, there is an overabundance of hackneyed declaratives where conditionals should have been used, as well as an over-reliance on unnamed sources. And yet this dogged pursuit and elucidation of the documentary record is supposed to be the sine qua non of these two books, writes Bill Davy.

Russell, with the help of Hulme, did a much better job of telling the story of Nagell in 2003 than he did in 1992, writes Jim DiEugenio.

An anthology of over forty chapters which spans many years of contributions, but the number of essays that are really important, insightful, and worth preserving is small, writes Jim DiEugenio.