Encyclopedia of Hoaxes, by Gordon Stein (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1993), xxi + 347 pp., $49.95 cloth.

Freethought history and literature maven Gordon Stein has done it

again. Always interested in the world of ideas, he has crafted a detailed work that should be in every library and on the reference shelf of every radio and television station. Dr. Stein's latest effort, The Encyclopedia of Hoaxes, should have wider appeal than his books on unbelief and freethought history.

For hoax buffs, all the "favorites" are here listed alphabetically in the Table of Contents: ancient astronauts, the Ber-muda Triangle, the Cardiff Giant, Atlantis, King Tut's Curse, the hollow Earth, the Hitler diaries, Aimee Semple McPherson's phony kidnapping, Nos-tradamus's "prophecies," the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, biorhythms, the Cottingley fairies, Communist Rules for Revolution, the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, the Shroud of Turin, Bigfoot, crop circles, levitation, and many more than even the majority of hoax fans may not have been aware.

Gordon Stein seems tailor-made to produce a book of this sort given his wide-ranging background. He holds a master in library science degree from the University of California at Los Angeles and a Ph.D. in physiology from Ohio State. In the Introduction, he informs us that "hoaxes hold a certain fascination for people ... because they involve the

John George is professor of political science and sociology at the University of Central Oklahoma. His latest book is Be Reasonable: Selected Quotations for Inquiring Minds (co-edited with Laird Wilcox, Prometheus Books, 1994).

successful fooling of at least some people for some time, and we all like to fool people." Stein separates hoaxes from swindles by noting that while a hoax may involve money, it includes more and "has an enduring quality." Swindles, however, are deceptions "done exclusively or primarily to make money." Dr. Stein also takes the time to differentiate between hoaxes and frauds (they can overlap), and among hoaxes, myths and legends. A long-lasting hoax, one that persists undetected over a considerable period of time, can become a legend or myth.

While nearly all of the entries in this encyclopedia may be accurately de-scribed as interesting, each reader will have favorites. A few of mine follow.

Perhaps the most widely circulated phony document of the twentieth cen-tury is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Given much publicity and distri-bution by auto mogul Henry Ford (who later disavowed it), the fabricated document was still being circulated in the United States in 1994, but far more widely and intensely in such nations as Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Libya. Those who still believe in this strange concoction evidently do not know that about 45 percent of it was taken almost directly from an 1864 satire by Maurice Joly. Entitled Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montes-quieu, Joly's work had nothing what-soever to do with Jews. But anti-Semitic fabricators took the sayings of Joly's Machiavelli and placed them in the mouths of "Jews bent on world con-quest." The London Times exposed the whole sordid mess in 1921.

Another favorite of mine is also a fabricated document, called Rules for Revolution or Communist Rules for Revolution. Making its first appearance in the British Moral Rearmament

publication New World News in Febru-ary 1946 (a date close to the "circa 1950" averred by some of Dr. Stein's expert sources), the Rules have been trotted out over the years to prove that "the Communists" want gun control (of course they do, but only in nations where they are in power); or to show that the sneaky Reds always planned to under-mine our morality by "[corrupting] the young" and getting "them interested in sex" (therefore we should oppose sex education). Purported to have been captured in a raid on Spartacist head-quarters in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1919, the Rules were never in that nation until about thirty years later (if ever). Also Spartacist headquarters were in Berlin, not Dusseldorf. The National Rifle Association has been reluctant to let go of this particular fabrication which the old conservative newsletter Combat dubbed "a hoax on anticommunists."

Nostradamus's "predictions" have long fooled many; however, it was not the old French physician who did the hoaxing, writes Stein, but people who tried after his death "to take advantage of his reputation." James Randi in The Mask of Nostradamus gives compelling evidence that Nostradamus was only trying to make short-range predictions about the area in which he lived. Stein deals convincingly with the claims of predictions about Hitler and Nazi Germany.

The only entry that might well have been made longer is "Satanism Hoaxes." Dr. Stein rightly dwells on the out-rageous lies of "Lauren Stratford," and discusses animal mutilations and the fear of satanic crime—a most exaggerated phenomenon. He might have added some words on the linking of Satanism with daycare centers and child moles-tation. Also, he could have noted that what passes for Satanism comes not from The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey (a freethinker who rejects the idea of Satan's existence), but to a large extent from assertions by literalist Christians. In other words, the few teenagers involved in spray-painting symbols on the walls and sacrificing an occasional unfortunate domestic cat first heard about such aberrant behavior through fundamentalist churches. •

Lies, Credulity, Ignorance, and More Lies

John George

Summer 1994 61