The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World
John Dickie
Aug 2020 · Hodder & Stoughton · Narrated by Simon Slater
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16 hr 34 min
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Cecil Rhodes and Shaquille O'Neal; Mozart and Peter Sellers; Duke Ellington and the Duke of Wellington; Benjamin Franklin and Rudyard Kipling. These Masons, and many others, people the pages of The Craft, but even more compelling is the overarching narrative of Freemasonry itself. As a set of character-forming ideals, and a way of binding men in fellowship, it proved so addictive that within a few decades of its foundation in London in 1717 it had spread as far as India, Australia, South Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.
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. The Mormons borrowed their rituals from the Craft. The Sicilian mafia stole the Masonic organizational model.
Amid all this strange diversity, Masonry's core rituals and values have remained unchanged, inspiring both loyalty and suspicion. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Freemasonry has always been a secret den of atheists and devil-worshippers: all Masons have been excommunicated since 1738. For Hitler, Mussolini and Franco the Lodges spread the diseases of pacifism, socialism and Jewish influence, so had to be crushed.
Professor Dickie's The Craft is an enthralling exploration of a movement that not only helped to forge modern society, but still has substantial contemporary influence. With 400,000 members in Britain, over a million in the USA, and around six million across the world, understanding the role of Freemasonry is as important now as it has ever been.
(P) 2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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. The Mormons borrowed their rituals from the Craft. The Sicilian mafia stole the Masonic organizational model.
Amid all this strange diversity, Masonry's core rituals and values have remained unchanged, inspiring both loyalty and suspicion. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Freemasonry has always been a secret den of atheists and devil-worshippers: all Masons have been excommunicated since 1738. For Hitler, Mussolini and Franco the Lodges spread the diseases of pacifism, socialism and Jewish influence, so had to be crushed.
Professor Dickie's The Craft is an enthralling exploration of a movement that not only helped to forge modern society, but still has substantial contemporary influence. With 400,000 members in Britain, over a million in the USA, and around six million across the world, understanding the role of Freemasonry is as important now as it has ever been.
(P) 2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
About the author
John Dickie is Professor of Italian Studies at University College London. Hodder & Stoughton published his Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia in 2004, to ecstatic reviews. It became an international bestseller, with over 20 translations, and won the CWA Dagger Award for Non-fiction that year. Since then he has published Delizia!: The Epic History of the Italians and their Food (2007) - now a six-part TV series for HIstory Channel Italia and other networks worldwide. His most recent books are Mafia Brotherhoods (2011) and Mafia Republic: Italy's Criminal Curse (2013).
In 2005 the President of the Italian Republic appointed him a Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarieta Italiana.
In 2005 the President of the Italian Republic appointed him a Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarieta Italiana.
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