The Real History of Secret Societies

By: Professor Richard B. Spence, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Professor Richard B. Spence

Welcome to The Real History of Secret Societies, a historical look at the true-life groups which, if you believe the myths, are the unspoken power behind some of the world’s major turning points, from controlling the British crown to holding back the electric car and keeping Martians and Atlantis under wraps.

Prepare yourself. In this course brought to you in partnership with HISTORY®, you will be visiting some of history’s deepest rabbit-holes, across centuries and continents, in search of secret societies in all their varieties. You will journey to some very dark places, and frankly some odd and sometimes silly ones as well. During 24 eye-opening lectures, Dr. Richard B. “Rick” Spence, Professor of History at the University of Idaho, guides you through the fascinating, often mystifying - sometimes disturbing - world of brotherhoods, sisterhoods, orders, cults, and cabals that have influenced human culture from ancient times to the present.

You’ll understand how and why secret societies have attracted some of history’s most brilliant, and some of its most evil, minds. Often demonized by their enemies, many secret societies have become the stuff of myths and conspiracy theories. Why do they exist? And when they are invented or imagined, why would someone pretend they exist? What do secret societies believe? Who do they recruit? Most important, what influence do they have? Buckle up and get ready to find out.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 The Great Courses (P)2019 The Teaching Company, LLC

Far more politics than fraternity.

The Professor starts with a definition of secret society broad enough to include Lenin's Bolshevik movement.

So this is one part fraternal history, one part "here's how power hungry people work using secrecy," and one big part speculation - which he readily admits as such.

Far more politics than fraternity. Strikes me as more late night TV than university course material. Least impressive of the Great Courses item I've ever downloaded.

Excellent, almost too thorough

Think of this as an intro to secret societies and underground political groups. There is a lot to chew on in here, and Professor Spence has a lot to tell you about. Each of these lectures covers so much political history and intrigue that Spence could do another entire series for each one of these individual lectures. But overall, really good perspective here.

Just “OK”

Too many societies were discussed so getting in depth into any didn’t really happen. It was a good high level overview of secret societies in general with some historical context (mostly what could be found in the news). Nothing really groundbreaking, but overall it was interesting.

Thought provoking

It was fascinating to find out how many secret societies there are in the world. They never die, the just mutate and take another form...

Think museum tour instead of classroom

If you approach it more as a museum tour and less as a classroom, it is a fun and engaging listen.

Only thing I was left wanting was a discussion on how we can mitigate or minimize the impact of those societies that are clearly working against the best interest of humanity. How can we prevent these misguided people from cultivating distress to bring about some silly vision that is entirely of their own making?