Brad Meltzer decodes all of history

A few weeks ago, Brad Meltzer’s History Decoded landed on my desk. It’s the kind of book that stands out from the pile of other review copies simply on account of the design. The textured cover blares “THE 10 GREATEST CONSPIRACIES OF ALL TIME” and asks questions like, “Why was Hitler so intent on capturing the Roman “Spear of Destiny”? Where did all the Confederacy’s gold go?” Then, you flip open the book, presumably to answer the question of where all the Confederate gold went, and find the beginning of each chapter amended with an envelope containing fascimile documents with faux-weathered edges pertaining to each question. It is something like if the History network decided to publish their own issue of McSweeney’s.

Meltzer is the host of Decoded, a History network show that seriously explores wing nut conspiracy theories. The book is very much a companion piece to that breezy yet oddly straight-faced treatment of crackpot theorizing. The intent is never to actually prove or disprove, say, the existence of UFOs at Area 51 or who killed JFK, but rather to give just enough consideration to theories of “The Babuska Lady” or large-eyed ETs to render them “unanswered.”

I caught Meltzer on the phone this afternoon and asked him, “How it is possible to ever know anything?” He almost balked at trudging through some epistemology 101 philosophizing and then conceded, “Everything is perspective ... One writer will take a document and say a thing about it and another writer will take the exact same object and say that it proves the exact opposite thing.” Thus, the fun with the fascimile documents folded into each chapter of History Decoded. They can mean whatever you want them to mean.

Brad Meltzer discusses History Decoded at the Morris and Rae Frank Theatre at the MJCCA tonight Thurs., Oct. 24 at 6:45 p.m.