<div><p>"Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—<I>Seattle Weekly</I></P> <p>"Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, <I>Paranoia</I> magazine</P> <p>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.</P> <p>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.</P> <p><I>Ritual America</I> 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.</P> <p>The authors of <I>Ritual America</I> contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable.</P> <p><B>Adam Parfrey </B>is the author of <I>Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind</I> and <I>It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps</I>. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series <I>Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment</I>.</P> <p><B>Craig Heimbichner </B>has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation <I>Secret and Suppressed II</I>, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in <I>Blood and Altar</I>.</P></DIV>