The Craft, John Dickie
The Craft, John Dickie
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The Craft
How the Freemasons Made the Modern World

Author: John Dickie

Narrator: John Dickie

Unabridged: 16 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 08/18/2020


Synopsis

Insiders call it the Craft. Discover the “thoroughly entertaining” (Wall Street Journal) true story of one of the most influential and misunderstood secret brotherhoods in modern society.

Founded in London in 1717 as a way of binding men in fellowship, Freemasonry proved so addictive that within two decades it had spread across the globe. Masonic influence became pervasive. Under George Washington, the Craft became a creed for the new American nation. Masonic networks held the British empire together. Under Napoleon, the Craft became a tool of authoritarianism and then a cover for revolutionary conspiracy. Both the Mormon Church and the Sicilian mafia owe their origins to Freemasonry.

Yet the Masons were as feared as they were influential. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Freemasonry has always been a den of devil-worshippers. For Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, the Lodges spread the diseases of pacifism, socialism and Jewish influence, so had to be crushed.

Freemasonry's story yokes together Winston Churchill and Walt Disney; Wolfgang Mozart and Shaquille O'Neal; Benjamin Franklin and Buzz Aldrin; Rudyard Kipling and 'Buffalo Bill' Cody; Duke Ellington and the Duke of Wellington.

John Dickie's The Craft is an enthralling exploration of a the world's most famous and misunderstood secret brotherhood, a movement that not only helped to forge modern society, but has substantial contemporary influence, with 400,000 members in Britain, over a million in the USA, and around six million across the world.

Author Bio

John Dickie is senior lecturer in Italian, University College London, and is the author of Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900.

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