Book mini-review: The Secret Societies Handbook
2.21.2010 at 02:23:58 PM
I received The Secret Societies Handbook by Michael Bradley on Christmas 2009. My family knows I'm interested in secret societies, not in joining but in the oh so secret things they may or may not be doing, so this book makes sense for me.
The first thing that needs to be said about The Secret Societies Handbook is that most of the organizations described within are not secret. Some, like the Council on Foreign Relations and Freemasons are very well documented. The criterion for getting into the book is only that the organization is accused of doing things secretly. So even though the Freemasons have meetings and gatherings in their countless lodges, people believe that they are also coordinating the lives of the rest of the world.
I won't go over each organization Bradley chose, but I will highlight a few of the more interesting ones. The first one he listed was the best one for me reading this book: the Assassins. I thought they were made up for the Ubisoft game, Assassin's Creed. Little did I know they were a real organization. The Council on Foreign Relations is an interesting one because it gets spoken of on the news frequently and usually not with the tone that they have a hidden agenda for world domination.
Before reading this book I had never heard of the Bilderbergers, an organization made up of the world's elite, wealthy and powerful. They meet every year for three or four days and then go back to their lives. Why? It's a secret. My reaction to this is the same as everybody I tell it to: "That doesn't make sense. How could the world's media not know that this gathering takes place?" But they do know about it. There just isn't anything to say as no information is public. This fact can be confirmed with basic research.
At the end of every chapter, I tended to go to at least Wikipedia to see how well it matched up with the book. Sometimes the book had more information. Sometimes Wikipedia had more, as the book dedicates only a few chapters to each topic. But in almost no cases was the book presenting information that appeared to be untrue.
The only chapter that almost seemed not worth printing is the chapter that covers three United States secret government UFO organizations. If true, these groups would be some of the only truly secret groups in the book. But they aren't real. The documents that exist are false. Only crackpot UFO nerds believe them to be real. The author does say this (in nicer words) but I feel like there's enough counterarguments to these groups' existences that they need not be mentioned.
In the end, almost all of the information in this book is available online. But you probably won't find it as nicely presented as it is in this book, nor all collected into one spot. Unfortunately, when dealing with topics like secret societies and conspiracy theories on the internet, the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad. If you are looking to get some basic information on everything from the Illuminati to Opus Dei, this book is for you.
The first thing that needs to be said about The Secret Societies Handbook is that most of the organizations described within are not secret. Some, like the Council on Foreign Relations and Freemasons are very well documented. The criterion for getting into the book is only that the organization is accused of doing things secretly. So even though the Freemasons have meetings and gatherings in their countless lodges, people believe that they are also coordinating the lives of the rest of the world.
I won't go over each organization Bradley chose, but I will highlight a few of the more interesting ones. The first one he listed was the best one for me reading this book: the Assassins. I thought they were made up for the Ubisoft game, Assassin's Creed. Little did I know they were a real organization. The Council on Foreign Relations is an interesting one because it gets spoken of on the news frequently and usually not with the tone that they have a hidden agenda for world domination.
Before reading this book I had never heard of the Bilderbergers, an organization made up of the world's elite, wealthy and powerful. They meet every year for three or four days and then go back to their lives. Why? It's a secret. My reaction to this is the same as everybody I tell it to: "That doesn't make sense. How could the world's media not know that this gathering takes place?" But they do know about it. There just isn't anything to say as no information is public. This fact can be confirmed with basic research.
At the end of every chapter, I tended to go to at least Wikipedia to see how well it matched up with the book. Sometimes the book had more information. Sometimes Wikipedia had more, as the book dedicates only a few chapters to each topic. But in almost no cases was the book presenting information that appeared to be untrue.
The only chapter that almost seemed not worth printing is the chapter that covers three United States secret government UFO organizations. If true, these groups would be some of the only truly secret groups in the book. But they aren't real. The documents that exist are false. Only crackpot UFO nerds believe them to be real. The author does say this (in nicer words) but I feel like there's enough counterarguments to these groups' existences that they need not be mentioned.
In the end, almost all of the information in this book is available online. But you probably won't find it as nicely presented as it is in this book, nor all collected into one spot. Unfortunately, when dealing with topics like secret societies and conspiracy theories on the internet, the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad. If you are looking to get some basic information on everything from the Illuminati to Opus Dei, this book is for you.