Books by Margaret C. Jacob

Myths persist and abound about the freemasons, but what are their origins? Margaret C. Jacob throws back the veil from a secret society that turns out not to have been very secret at all, revealing the truth about an organization that fascinated the eighteenth-century public in much the same way it fascinates us today.

Drawing on sources as various as Inquisition records and spy reports, minutes of scientific societies and the writings of political revolutionaries, Margaret C. Jacob reveals a moment in European history when an ideal of cultural openness came to seem strong enough to counter centuries of prevailing chauvinism and xenophobia.