Our occulted history Do the global elite conceal ancient aliens?

An Art Belllike exercise in conspiracy theory. Fans of Rowdy Roddy Piper's John Carpenter romp They Live (1988) know the setup: "conventional science, and perhaps even institutions administered by the federal government or funded by the wealthy elite, has worked to conceal our possible true heritage." Noting the weasel words "perhaps" and "possible," what might that heritage be? Well, children, we're all stardust, and in the weirdness of our DNA--so much of which, conspiracy theorist Marrs (The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies that Threaten to Take Over America, 2008, etc.) writes, is made up of a useless, redundant nothingness of dead code--we may just harbor clues to a time when strange critters called the Anunnaki strode the Earth. Or maybe most of us are just meat for the overlords, who are biding their time--and maybe the "wealthy elite" and their minions are really the Anunnaki in disguise. After all, you knew Mitt Romney acted a little weirdly and robotically up there on the hustings, didn't you? Throughout this book, which P.T. Barnum would have loved, Marrs throws every conspiracy theory he can at the problem, from the "occulted" existence of a 10th planet in the solar system (the masters don't want you to know about that, of course) to alchemy and the hidden history of gold. The result is an odd sort of populism, whereby we earthlings are urged to rebel against our corporate overlords and their "millennia-long agenda of attempting to subjugate the human population." Huzzah! To call this hokum is to malign that useful word. Suffice it to say that Carpenter's film is a hell of a lot more fun.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.