Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, the Illmuniati, Skull & Bones, Black Helicopters, teh New World Order, and Many, Many More
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.30 (943 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B002KOGB4I |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 271 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-12-06 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
• The Knights Templarbegan as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers. Did you know?• Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members. An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar—the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate—and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an eighteenth-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.From the Trade Paperback edition.. • Groom Lake, Dreamland, Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch, The Farm, Watertown Strip, Red Square, “The Box,” are all names for Area 51
. A freelance writer and editor for more than twenty years, he has worked at Book-of-the-Month Club (where he created Traditions, a club devoted to Jewish interests), as well as at Random House and The New York Review of Books. Arthur Goldwag is the author of Isms and Ologies
Not a page goes by without some “I-didn’t-know-that!” nugget. Given what’s going on this ever-more-paranoid society, a book like this becomes not only titillating but crucially important.”—Steven Waldman, Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Beliefnet“The answer to your burning questions about subjects from Area 51 to the Yakuza.”—Details“Delightful.” –The Weekly Standard “Goldwag is a colorful writer who makes
Lots of interesting tidbits Many of the cults mentioned in Goldwag's book run together after a while, but several are familiar, especially Heaven's Gate, the Branch Davidians, and the People's Temple. What is surprising is that many of the cult leaders started out with apparent good intentions. James Jones welcomed the dispossessed into his church. By the early 1970s he had his own radio show in Uriah, California. He also had political influence in the Bay Area and was appointed head of San Francisco's housing commission. But . "Lions and Tigers and Bears! Oh, MY!" according to Forrest Lee Horn Sr.. Yes, Virginia, there really are secret societies. Many of them try their best to indulge in conspiracies, some to advance the cause of their members' well-being or wallets, some to arrogate power to themselves, some just to be sneaky.This little book covers most, if not all of them. I would have preferred a bit more depth on a few of the "conspiracies," but by and large Mr. Goldwag does a creditable job. I found a few organizations of which I had never heard, but I couldn't recall one secret societ. Andalusian Dog said overly ambitious but ultimately insubstantial and too opinionated. I will side with the author that most conspiracies are insanely ridiculous and that people need to believe stuff in order to balanced out the mostly uncontrolled reality we live in. He is however, too opinionated for true objective exploratory writing of this subject matter. He is at the very opposite end of the spectrum of the lunatic fringe he is writing about. While conspiracies for the most part, (I agree with him here) may fill a void in our lives to explain otherwise chaotic incidents, they ca