The Craft: How the Freemasons Made the Modern World - Paperback

by John Dickie (Author)

Discover the "convincingly researched and thoroughly entertaining" (The Wall Street Journal) history of the world's oldest and most influential fraternity

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. Under George Washington, the Craft became a creed for the new American nation. Under Napoleon, it became a tool of authoritarianism and a cover for revolutionary conspiracy. Later, both the Mormon Church and the Sicilian Mafia would owe their origins to Freemasonry.

Yet the Masons were as feared as they were influential, seen by the Catholic Church as a den of devil worship. 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. John Dickie's The Craft is an enthralling exploration of the world's most famous and misunderstood secret brotherhood, a movement that not only helped to forge modern society but remains prominent today.

Author Biography

John Dickie is professor of Italian studies at University College, London. His book Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia is an international bestseller, with over twenty translations, and won the CWA Dagger award for nonfiction. In 2005, the president of the Italian Republic appointed him a Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana. He lives in London.