Looking for a gift for someone that likes weird, off the wall, funky, scary, fun stuff. Cults, conspiracy theories (but based in fact/ones that are actually true), stories/biographies about interesting people or events, diseases, etc. Preferably not true crime.
A few books I know they liked: The White Masai, Under the Banner of Heaven, one about the Georgia Guidestones, one about the cult that drank the kool-aid.
by Antique_Parsley_5285
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_American Pox_ is great and discusses the last major small pox outbreak in the U.S. It was written in about 2011, but has real resonance with the COVID response.
I also really enjoyed _History of Syphilis_ by Claude Quétel.
This one is written like a thriller – The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus by Richard Preston.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty
I found Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell interesting. It talks about real cults as well as cult-adjacent things like multi-level marketing.
Natural beauty
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Is a good one
Colin Dickey – Under the Eye of Power is about conspiracy theories and how they fit into American history.
Mike Rothschild (no relation) – Jewish Space Lasers is about anti-semitic conspiracy theories, in particular those about the Rothschilds.
Mary Roach has a series of books about weird stuff, but one I liked is called Stiff (not that kind). It’s about different things that people use cadavers for (not that). Medical school labs, mortician schools, training for cadaver dogs and medical examiners learning about states of decomposition under different circumstances.
It is fascinating and horrifying at the same time. She has a bit of a quirky, tongue-in-cheek style that makes it less grim.
The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris
**CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties** by Tom O’Neill
About how Charles Manson was possibly? probably? tangled up in the MKULTRA program (gov’t mind control) and had a bunch of spooky connections to the CIA, got let off the hook for crimes etc.
**The Radioactive Boy Scout** by Ken Silverstein
About David Hahn who made a functioning nuclear reactor at 16 years old in his shed to get a boy scout badge. He had to go to GREAT lengths to obtain radioactive materials and was the first (only?) person to be individually responsible for a Superfund cleanup site.
**Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, The Cold War and the Birth of Psychedelics** by Benjamin Breen
About how Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were taking LSD through a CIA program in the 1950s (The Macy Group).. early anthropology and acid research, it takes a lengthy detour through the life of John C. Lilly who did dolphin communication research, including injecting them with LSD, and invented the sensory deprivation chamber.
**Bare-faced Messiah** by Russell Miller
Biography of L. Ron Hubbard and the beginnings of Scientology. Hubbard was an occult magician, a Naval Intelligence officer, a wingnut, sci-fi author and more. Wild life story.
Dark Tide is a history of the Great Molasses Flood, which killed 21 and wounded about 150 people in the North End of Boston in 1919.
Seconding all the Mary Roach suggestions. I loved both Spook and Stiff. Two newer ones that are on my TBR list are “The CIA Book Club” about the CIA smuggling banned books into Soviet Europe during the Cold War. Also, “The Mind Electric” about brain function, neurological diseases, mental illness, etc. They both look fascinating.
Deep by James Nestor was pretty cool. It’s about free diving
Freakanomics is amazing.
Americana Desperado is true story & wild, wild ride. Vietnam sniper to mafia to one of the largest coke importers in Miami in the 80s, to government “asset”.
The Indifferent Stars Above is about the Donner party.
Programmed to Kill by David McGowan
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko is about junk science, the history of coroners, and the way two people were responsible for sending innocent men to jail (it focuses around two men who were wrongfully convicted but gets into lots of other stuff too)
The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown is a book about the Donner party-honestly wasn’t obsessed with this but it might meet your criteria!
Cannibalism-A Perfectly Natural History by Bill Schute. It’s what it sounds like! It’s super interesting and also weirdly very respectful given the topic
The Radium Girls by Kate Moore-about dial makers who were working with radium, the fallout for them health wise, really great book!
There’s always Jon Ronson, he does a lot of fun nonfiction. I’d start with So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.
Ah, one of my favorite subgenres! However, tolerance/ideas of “weird” very person to person. So here’s some of the best stuff I can think of off the top of my head.
I’m no particular order:
Anything by Mary Roach. Her books tackle a subject to answer all the questions you never dared or thought to ask.
Stiff– human cadavers
Bonk — sex
Gulp — digestion, end to end
Spooky — the afterlife
And more!
Also check out Caitlin Dougherty — she does death, funeral rituals and grief. Taboo subjects like human composting and squick questions >!will my cat eat my eyeballs?!<
Bitch: on the female of the species by Lucy Cooke — wanna know about female controlled reproduction steering the course of evolution? We’re going to examine >!animal sex lives and some really weird genitalia!<
Gory details by Ericka Engelhaupt — straight outta Ripley’s (believe it or not).
On that note, try checking out the various volumes of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Each entry is fairly short, but from there you can then look up more information on a person / ritual /thing you never know about.
The salmon Cannon and the levitating frog by Carly Anne York — fairly tame by my standards, but still has some really interesting stories in it.
And throwing these out there because they are really good and weird is relative:
The dinosaur artist by Paige Williams. All about the out in the open Black market of fossils.
The radium girls by Kate Moore — despite knowing the danger, a factory encourages young women to lick radioactive material. You will be disgusted and enraged.
Radium Girls is great if you love body horror. I do not love body horror, but I still thought it was an excellent book.
I really enjoyed The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch. It’s a collection of personal essays reflecting on his career as an undertaker. It’s very well written, funny at parts and touching at others.
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
It’s a story about a family of 12 children, 6 of whom are diagnosed with schizophrenia. It was an unlikely choice for me but I read all the way to the end.
Death’s Acre by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson which is about the Body Farm aka the outdoor forensics lab where they study human decomposition using bodies that have been donated to science
I agree that Mary Roach would be great if they’ve never read any of her work, but I also recommend:
*Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America* by Bridget Read – a history of multilevel marketing companies (think Amway, Mary Kay, LulaRoe, etc) that goes to some unexpected places
*Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything* by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen – looks at weird medical treatments throughout history (including their influence on modern medicine), and has illustrations