Invented Knowledge by Ronald H Fritze – review

From blockbuster films of the Indiana Jones variety to bestsellers such as The Da Vinci Code , pseudohistory is big business. As Fritze shows in this detailed yet readable study, false history can be great fun but it also has a dark side, often becoming "a tool of racism, religious fanaticism and nationalistic extremism". As he argues, pseudohistory and false science are modern phenomena, emerging in the late 19th century as empirical scientific methods created a vast "stockpile of discarded and discredited scientific theories and historical ideas" to plunder. There is no doubting its popularity. Type Atlantis into Amazon.com and you get 18,644 results: "Atlantis sells". The fact that 40% of Connecticut college students believe it was home to a great civilisation shows the need to teach "critical thinking" in universities, something Fritze believes has been neglected. Indeed, his final chapter shows how even academia is not immune to pseudohistory. An intriguing survey of crackpot theories that shows both the power of human imagination and our gullibility.