- Freemasonry's first American lodge included a young Benjamin Franklin among its members.

- The Knights Templar began as impoverished warrior monks then evolved into bankers.

- Groom Lake, Dreamland, Homey Airport, Paradise Ranch, The Farm, Watertown Strip, Red Square, "The Box," are all names for Area 51.

An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar--the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate--and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an eighteenth-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.

Arthur Goldwag is the author of Isms and Ologies and The New Hate. A freelance writer and editor for more than twenty years, he has worked at Book-of-the-Month Club (where he created Traditions, a club devoted to Jewish interests), as well as at Random House and The New York Review of Books.