An overview of the mysterious history of the Freemasons and their presence in American society With over four million members worldwide, and two million in the U.S., Freemasonry is the largest fraternal organization in the world. Published in conjunction with the National Heritage Museum, this extravagantly illustrated volume offers an overview of Freemasonry’s origins in seventeenth-century Scotland and England before exploring its evolving role in American history, from the Revolution through the labor and civil rights movements, and into the twenty-first century. American Freemasons explores some of the causes for the rise and fall of membership in the fraternity and why it has attracted men in such large numbers for centuries. American Freemasons is the perfect introduction to understanding a society that, while shrouded in mystery, has played an integral role in the lives and communities of millions of Americans. Copublished with the National Heritage Museum.

"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—Seattle Weekly "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, Paranoia magazine Secret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence. On the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. The authors of Ritual America contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable. Adam Parfrey is the author of Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind and It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Craig Heimbichner has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation Secret and Suppressed II, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in Blood and Altar.

Article abstracts and citations of reviews and dissertations covering the United States and Canada.

"Written to mark Oak Knoll Press's thirtieth anniversary, Books about Books is a comprehensive history and bibliography of the press, from its beginning in 1978 through the fall of 2008. Bob Fleck, founder, owner, and president of the Press, tells the story of his adventures in publishing. Bob decided to leave the field of chemical engineering in 1976 to start Oak Knoll Books, an antiquarian bookseller specializing in books about books. Two years later, he started publishing in the same field, beginning with a reprint of Bigmore and Wyman's A Bibliography of Printing. Oak Knoll Press has operated out of several buildings and under several publishing directors, but in the thirty years of its existence, it has developed a reputation for excellence in the field of books about books. The Press has published 320 books to date and is still going strong." "The book begins with a fifty-page history of the press, which is well illustrated with more than fifty images. The history is followed by the bibliography, which lists 320 books in order of publication. Each entry includes the author, title, edition, and a brief physical description, as well as a paragraph describing the contents of the book. Any subsequent reprints are also listed. The bibliography includes about twenty full-page images of Oak Knoll Press publications. Books about Books is sure to be a useful tool for all of those wishing to expand their Oak Knoll Press collection or understand individual titles in the context of the whole."--BOOK JACKET.