Contents as advertised. Saves you time by demystifying the still going organizational hoodwinking.
Enjoyed the book, transaction went well.
Great book. But could use an updated format like the other great book on secret socities.
This book is good if you don't want any one thing in depth but just a general overview, this book is what you are looking for.
Book Review: Cults, Conspiracies, & Secret Societies by Arthur Goldwag (2009)This is a very interesting, small format paperback book of 332 pages, which deals with the three topics from the title. There are no illustrations.
I have not read the entire book- as I frankly was interested in the Assassin section only for my own research. Starting on page 12, paragraph 2 this entire section of work is WORD FOR WORD from William Cooper's "Mystery Babylon" series.
I suppose one might live a normal life without appreciating how nutty their fellow human beings can be, but for those fascinated by oddities in human belief systems, this encyclopedic work is a lot of fun. (You did enjoy reading the encyclopedia when you were a kid, right?
Reality is a hard master for some, even for the brightest, and best educated, as Goldwag demonstrates in his most helpful introduction to very and less familiar fantastical beliefs. Some question his three broad classifications; however, they work well, for the most part.
Lots of great information in this book, and it is quite broad in scope, while not as in-depth as I would have liked. I would also have liked a bibliography and/or some references, but this book was meant to be general information.
To be fair, this is a survey book, one that introduces the reader to a plethora of the strange, bizarre, and violent, and to slowly introduce evidence of a mind-set that can lead a person into true belief. The section on Prem Rawat was interesting to me personally, since I know several followers of this individual, but had no idea as to the extent of his cult.
This is the non-fiction version of Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum," a wild compendium of the odd (sometimes REALLY odd) beliefs that have held sway over the last few centuries. To these add the Birthers and you have a full house of entertainingly paranoid factoid-salad.
When I first recieved this book I thought that it would be a reliable source of information concerning the powers that are in control of our world today. instead the author has compiled a massive amount of documentation about these organizations only to conclude that none of these threats are real and that any who would take them seriously suffer from paranoia.
The middle section on conspiracies was old news because just about any conspiracy theory eventually works it's way up to the Masons, Illuminati, the Jews or all three. But the sections on cults and secret societies were fascinating.
Superficial, smug, and judgmental. This book is a joke.
