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The majority of this book is debunking. He addresses creationism, psychic mediums and Holocaust Revisionists.
The book starts with a discussion of the difference between a cynic and a skeptic. A cynic is one who disbelieves something new pretty much on principle. A skeptic is one who withholds his opinion until he sees compelling evidence of the new idea. IOW, Shermer's definition of a skeptic is pretty close to that of a scientist. In fact, I'm not sure I see the difference. Unless you want to say that a scientitst is a person building the evidence that a skeptic would decide with.
Next, there's a little discussion of the psychological and sociological guesses at why people believe weird things. Shermer has a degree in psychology, so he has some expertise in this area. But the discussion is only one chapter long, so it's fairly brief.
Shermer uses creationism, psychic mediums and Holocaust Revisionists as sort of case studies in how to be a skeptic. But I think that overall theme gets lost in the details of debunking those beliefs. And also, "how to be a skeptic" is a bit different than "why do people believe weird things." While I did find the some of the debunking information interesting, it went on a little long. Especially the Holocaust stuff. I was sort of hoping he'd get back to exploring why people do believe weird things. He never really did.
One fairly interesting personal note he put in was how he used to be a believer in all sorts of pseudoscience. He used to take peoples' pronouncements pretty much on face value. Now, he's a skeptic. That's a pretty big change.
On Mighty's Total Book Value Scale, Paperback. There's some exploration into why people believe what they do, but it's more about debunking.
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