A fifth of the way into the twenty- first century, it is hard to believe that flat-earthers are still around. Faced with assertions of flat-earth belief by figures from the athletic and entertainment worlds, it might be tempting to dismiss them as insincere or aimed at getting attention. Yet there are credible polls indicating that the level of acceptance of flat-earthery is about 1 percent in the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands—and possibly even higher in France and Brazil. And the phenomenon of flat-earth conferences suggests a degree of sincerity: someone who spends $1,000 to attend such a conference presumably is not doing so ironically or frivolously.
Falling Flat: A Refutation of Flat-Earth Claims. By Danny R. Faulkner. Master Books, Green Forest, Arkansas, 2019. ISBN 978-1-68344-206-6. 385 pp. Softcover, $16.99.
Danny R. Faulkner’s announced ambition in Falling Flat is “to provide answers for people who, when confronted with arguments that the earth is flat, may not know how to respond” (8). Accordingly, a good portion of the book—seven of its thirteen chapters— reviews the abundant scientific evidence against the idea that the earth is flat. (Indeed, the running head throughout the book erroneously renders its subtitle as “A Scientific Refutation of Flat Earth Claims.”) Reasonably enough, Faulkner concentrates on what might be called “mainstream flat-earthery,” according to which the earth is a finite flat disk, to the exclusion of the more recherché variants.