Lost at sea: the Jon Ronson mysteries

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The New York Times Ronson investigates the strange things we?re willing to believe in, from lifelike robots programmed with our loved ones? personalities to indigo children to hypersuccessful spiritual healers to the Insane Clown Posse?s juggalo fans. He looks at ordinary lives that take on extraordinary perspectives, for instance a pop singer whose life?s greatest passion is the coming alien invasion, and the scientist designated to greet those aliens when they arrive. Ronson throws himself into the stories?in a tour de force piece, he splits himself into multiple Ronsons (Happy, Paul, and Titch, among others) to get to the bottom of credit card companies? predatory tactics and the murky, fabulously wealthy companies behind those tactics. Amateur nuclear physicists, assisted-suicide practitioners, the town of North Pole, Alaska?s Christmas-induced high school mass-murder plot: Ronson explores all these tales with a sense of higher purpose and universality, and suddenly, mid-read, they are stories not about the fringe of society or about people far removed from our own experience, but about all of us. Incisive and hilarious, poignant and maddening, revealing and disturbing?Ronson writes about our modern world, the foibles of contemporary culture, and the chaos that lies at the edge of our daily lives.;The strange things we're willing to believe. Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend? ; Doesn't everyone have a solar? ; The chosen ones ; A message from God -- High-flying lives. The name's Ronson, Jon Ronson ; I looked into that Camera. And I just said it ; I'm loving aliens instead ; First contact ; Stanley Kubrick's boxes -- Everyday difficulty. Santa's little conspirators ; Phoning a friend ; Who killed Richard Cullen? ; The sociopath mind guru and the TV hypnotist ; Death at the château ; "I've thought about doing myself in loads of times -- " -- Stepping over the line. Blood sacrifice ; "I make it look like they died in their sleep" ; Is she for real? ; The fall of a pop impresario -- Justice. Amber waves of green ; The man who tried to split the atom in his kitchen ; Lost at sea.