JFK, Karl Marx, the pope, Aristotle Onassis, Howard Hughes, Fox Mulder, Bill Clinton, both George Bushes - all have been linked to vastly complicated global (or even galactic) intrigues. Two years after Mark Fenster first published Conspiracy Theories, the attacks of 9/11 stirred the imaginations of a new generation of believers. In this new edition of the landmark work, and the first in-depth look at the conspiracy communities that formed to debunk the 9/11 Commission Report, Fenster shows that conspiracy theories play an important role in U.S. democracy. Examining how and why conspiracy theories circulate through mass culture, he argues that dismissing them as pathological or marginal flattens contemporary politics and culture because they are - contrary to popular portrayal - an intense articulation of populism and, at their essence, are strident calls for a better, more transparent government. Fenster demonstrates once again that the people who claim someone is after us are, at least, worth hearing.