The subtitle of John Dicke’s history, How the Freemasons Made the Modern World, is a bit hyperbolic, but then, that’s often the way of subtitles in today’s publishing game. But it does amplify Dickie’s exploration of how, in certain contexts, the Masons were one of the bridges between the religious past and the secularized present. Emphasis on one is mine. The Craft is a well sourced, readable, occasionally snarky history of how the Freemasons became the root of all conspiracy theories (that’s you, QAnon!) and how they did actually exercise influence, albeit in contrary ways. The United States? It was, in origin and in part, a Masonic conspiracy.
