Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies cover art

Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies

The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, The Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, The New World Order, and many, many more

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Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies

By: Arthur Goldwag
Narrated by: Fred Sanders
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About this listen

Did you know?

• Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members.

• The Knights Templar began as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers.

• Groom Lake, Dreamland, Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch, The Farm, Watertown Strip, Red Square, “The Box,” are all names for Area 51.

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.©2009 Arthur Goldwag; (P)2009 Random House
Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts Religious Studies World Middle Ages Russia Middle East Africa

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Critic reviews

The kind of reference manual that the Internet cannot supplant . . . Goldwag keeps the facts straight and gives the rumors -- no matter how lurid and entertaining -- about as much respect as they deserve.”—The Washington Post

“Marvelous.”—Scientific American

“Arthur Goldwag is a shrewd, fair minded, learned and entertaining tour guide through a world that’s simultaneously funny and frightening. 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.com

“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 good use of his material as he aims to explain, rather than debunk or expose, a fascinating diversity of beliefs.”—Boston Globe

“The author’s delivery is engaging and entertaining. The amount of research done in this book is astounding. . . . An incredibly insightful, thoroughly enjoyable look at society’s shadow.”—Armchair Interviews

“Goldwag navigates his way through the wilder reaches of human belief with great urbanity.”
—Mark Booth, author of The Secret History of the World: As Laid Down by the Secret Societies

“As entertainingly written as it is enlightening.”
—Phillip Lopate
All stars
Most relevant
this book won't give you too much information on the subjects it covers.l, but it is a good introduction to all three categories and certainly inspired me to.read up.on some of the subjects.

the weakest section is the conspiracies as many were well known and you can't say much about crackpot stuff like that.

the narrator was good, varying his tone and pitch to.keep things interesting.

most surpinging thing was learning the Assassin"s from the popular game series Assassin"s Creed were based on a real historical cult.

entertainingly read and interesting stuff

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if this had been a handheld reading book, then i would not have been able to put it down. the content is exactly what i was looking for. one main point is that i can go back again and again whenever i need to, to remind myself of details in this book. thanx AUDIBLE for a great listen.

a great listen

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a very compressive presentation I don't think he left any thing out over all a great listen


neville

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Cults, Conspiracies and Secret Societies is an enjoyable, broad-ranging sweep across these strange and mysterious underground groups. It’s compellingly written and entertaining, though at times it focuses on breadth at the expense of depth. I would’ve loved a bit more analysis on the commonalities between the groups, and a conclusion that drew out key points. Nonetheless Goldwag’s lengthy, well-researched and relatively-unbiased account is well worth a listen.

An enjoyable sweep

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Basic introduction to the topics discussed, needs more details on them perhaps a chapter each. I say this because each topic such as the Masons is alot larger than simply being included as a sub section. Not bad though but I flagged towards the end.

Good for a basic understanding

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