Did you know? - 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.