by Jon Ronson
I loved piecing together the history of group madness from Gustave LeBon to Philip Zimbardo. Five people were incredibly generous with their time and expertise—Adam Curtis, Bob Nye, Steve Reicher, Alex Haslam, and, especially, Clifford Stott. Clifford kindly talked me through the perils of deindividuation in two long Skype conversations. I recommend his book Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the 2011 Riots, cowritten with Steve Reicher and published by Constable & Robinson in 2011.
My research into LeBon’s history took me to Bob Nye’s book The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave LeBon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the 3rd Republic, issued by SAGE Publications in 1975, and to Nye’s introduction to the Transaction Publishers’ reprint of the Dover edition of Gustave LeBon’s The Crowd, published in 1995. Some details about LeBon’s relationship with the Anthropological Society of Paris came from Nature and Nurture in French Social Sciences, 1859–1914 and Beyond, by Martin S. Staum, published by McGill–Queen’s University Press in 2011. I learned that LeBon’s fans included Goebbels and Mussolini from reading Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy, written by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi and published by the University of California Press in 2000, and The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, written by David Welch and published by Routledge in 2002.
My research into Philip Zimbardo took me to “Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny: The BBC Prison Study,” by Steve Reicher and Alex Haslam, which appeared in the British Journal of Social Psychology in 2006, and Dr. Zimbardo’s rebuttal, “On Rethinking the Psychology of Tyranny: The BBC Prison Study,” published in the same journal.
Dr. Gary Slutkin’s comments about the London riots being like a virus came from his article “Rioting Is a Disease Spread from Person to Person—The Key Is to Stop the Infection,” published in The Observer/The Guardian on August 13, 2011. The Jack Levin quotation came from “UK Riots: ‘We Don’t Want No Trouble. We Just Want a Job,’” written by Shiv Malik and published in The Guardian on August 12, 2011. It was Clifford Stott’s book and guidance that took me to both of those stories.
My interview with Malcolm Gladwell was broadcast on BBC’s The Culture Show on October 2, 2013. My thanks to the director, Colette Camden; the series producer, Emma Cahusac; and the series editor, Janet Lee.
Although this book is full of new stuff, a few lines were self-plagiarized from a column and a feature I wrote for The Guardian’s Weekend magazine. I’m referring to the story of how my son forced me to reenact being thrown into a lake, and to my interviews with Troy and Mercedes Haefer from 4chan. Parts of those interviews appeared in my story “Security Alert,” which was published in The Guardian on May 3, 2013. My thanks to Charlotte Northedge, who edited that feature.
My information about Oswald Mosley and Diana Mitford came from The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, edited by Charlotte Mosley and published by 4th Estate in 2007, and from Hurrah for the Blackshirts! Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, written by Martin Pugh and published by Jonathan Cape in 2005. I’d also like to thank Jil Cove of the Cable Street Group, a history project created to commemorate those people who fought back against the British Union of Fascists. Some biographical details about Max Mosley came from his interview with John Humphreys on BBC Radio 4’s On the Ropes, which was broadcast on March 1, 2011, and from “Max Mosley Fights Back,” by Lucy Kellaway, published in the Financial Times on February 4, 2011. I drew as well from Justice David Eady’s July 24, 2008, adjudication on Max Mosley v. News Group Newspapers Ltd, which can be read on bbc.co.uk.
I learned about the suicide of the Welsh lay preacher Arnold Lewis from three sources: News of the World? Fake Sheikhs and Royal Trappings, written by Peter Burden and published by Eye Books in 2009; Tickle the Public: One Hundred Years of the Popular Press, written by Matthew Engel and published by Phoenix in 1997; and Ian Cutler’s self-published memoir The Camera Assassin III: Confessions of a Gutter Press Photojournalist, which is available for free on his website—www.cameraassassin.co.uk.
I first learned about David Buss—the author of The Murderer Next Door—from Radiolab: The Bad Show, first broadcast on WNYC on January 9, 2012. It was a producer of Radiolab—Tim Howard—who put me in touch with a former contributor to the show, Jonah Lehrer. So my thanks to Radiolab for that too. The Murderer Next Door was published by the Penguin Press in 2005.
Some background information on the Zumba prostitution ring in Kennebunk came from the story “Modern-Day Puritans Wring Hands over Zumba Madam’s List of Shame,” by Patrik Jonsson, which appeared in The Christian Science Monitor on October 13, 2012.
For more on Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s days at Stanford, I recommend “The Birth of Google,” by John Battelle, which appeared in Wired in August 2005.
All my information about the Stasi came from Anna Funder’s brilliant Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, published by Granta in 2003 and reprinted by Harper Perennial in 2011.
My research into the terrible story of Lindsay Armstrong took me to “She Couldn’t Take Any More,” by Kirsty Scott, published in The Guardian on August 1, 2002. My thanks to Kirsty for her article and for her help putting me in touch with Lindsay’s mother, Linda.
Biographical information about Jim McGreevey came from his memoir The Confession, published by William Morrow Paperbacks in 2007.
For more on Walpole Prison during the 1970s, I recommend When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison Abolition, by Jamie Bissonnette, with Ralph Hamm, Robert Dellelo, and Edward Rodman, published by South End Press in 2008, and James Gilligan’s Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic, published by Vintage in 1997. In 1981, Massachusetts state senator Jack Backman wrote an open letter to Amnesty International complaining about conditions inside Walpole. I used a few lines from his letter in my description of life inside the prison. My thanks to Backman’s former aide S. Brian Wilson for publishing it online.
A huge number of economists and journalists and ad-revenue people offered to help me understand how Google may have profited from the shaming of Justine Sacco. I’m very grateful to them all—Chris Bannon, Aarti Shahani, Jeremy Gin, Ruth Lewy, Solvej Krause, Rebecca Watson, Paul Zak, Darren Filson, Brian Lance, Jonathan Hersh, Alex Blumberg, Steve Henn, and Zoe Chace.
My thanks to Thomas Goetz for his help in tracking down the inventor of Your Speed signs.
My wife, Elaine, was a brilliant early reader, as were my editors, Geoff Kloske at Riverhead, Kris Doyle and Paul Baggaley at Picador, and Natasha Fairweather and Natasha Galloway at AP Watt/United Agents. They helped me think about ways to shape this book when I really needed help. Thanks also to Derek Johns, Sarah Thickett, and Georgina Carrigan at AP Watt/United Agents; Casey Blue James, Laura Perciasepe, and Elizabeth Hohenadel at Riverhead; Ira Glass, Julie Snyder, and Brian Reed at This American Life; Jim Nelson and Brendan Vaughan at GQ; Ashley Cataldo at the American Antiquarian Society; Toni Massaro at the University of Arizona; Dan Kahan at Yale; and Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Wakeham, Starlee Kine, Fenton Bailey, Geoff Lloyd, Emma-Lee Moss, Mike McCarthy, Marc Maron, Tim Minchin, Daniel and Paula Ronson, Leslie Hobbs, Brian Daniels, Barbara Ehrenreich, Marty Sheehan, and Camilla Elworthy.
My biggest thanks go to my interviewees, especially Jonah Lehrer, Justine Sacco, Lindsey Stone, Hank, Adria Richards, and Raquel. These people had never before spoken to a journalist about what had happened to them. I was asking them to relive for me some of the most traumatic moments of their lives. Some of them took a lot of persuading, and I hope they think it was worthwhile.
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