The author is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology. He also teaches the history of science, technology, and evolutionary thought at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Here he writes for the lay audience, identifying 25 fallacies that lead people to believe weird things and discussing various aspects of pseudoscience and superstition, including creationism, Holocaust denial, encounters with aliens, the paranormal, and medieval and modern epidemics of accusations. The foreword is by Stephen Jay Gould. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.