Nice.

There has always been this "shroud of secrecy" over the Freemasons. Even before I read Dan Brown's famous novel, The Da Vinci Code (which had all sorts of theories about the Masonic movement), there has been all kinds of interpretations of what exactly they are. Some say they are some kind of a gentleman's' secret society with secret rituals and handshakes. Some say they are an underground deviant form of Christianity. Some say they are connected to the Knights Templar, an organisation in the medieval times entrusted by the Vatican to guard a secret (the Holy Grail, no less). Why are masonic symbols seen on famous structures in Europe and even America? Was the USA government under its first president, George Washington "controlled" by Freemasons? Since the Freemasons' ideology takes its cue from Christianity, why are Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc known to be members? This book does have, in its way, answers to all the above questions.

This book is written by "Britain's leading expert on freemasonry", Robert L D Cooper, a historian, member of the Scottish Freemason Society and curator of the Scottish Masonic Museum & Library.

This book begins with a summary of the history of the Knights Templar. This is actually very necessary as he then goes on to discuss the theory of the connection between the Knights Templar and the Freemasonry. The different theories of the origins of the movement are then discussed. The Masonic rituals, symbols, lodges, hierarchy and ethos are then also discussed.
There is also a list of famous Freemasons which include George Washington (first President of the USA), Edwin Aldrin (2nd man on the moon), Sir Winston Churchill (the British Prime Minister during the Second World War), Clark Gable (an actor famous for his role as Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind), Harry Houdini (an escape artist), John Philip Sousa ( a USA Marine Band leader famous for his march songs which my band used to play including Semper Fidelis, High School Cadets, etc. He also invented the sousaphone, a variant of the tuba with the bell pointing forward over the player's shoulder specifically for use in marching brass bands), etc.