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Some of the more persistent rumors about Freemasons include the notion that they're successors to the medieval Knights of Templar, that they're trying to create a New World Order and that they use symbols to communicate ancient wisdom. What was the most surprising thing you found? That lodges are learning how to get by with fewer members and fewer resources. There was a certain cachet in ages past. But the overall membership has really been aging. There's a real attrition rate now. If it's going to survive at all, it has to turn that around...
...Freemasons aren't busy running the world, what exactly is it that they do? The outer mission is to be of service to the greater community, donating to charities and Masonic youth groups, like the Order of DeMolay for boys and Rainbow Girls, which encourage kids to be good citizens and give them social circles that are supervised by adults and are more positive than hanging out on street corners. The organization is also based on a kind of stoic philosophy, to become the master of your own passions - don't fall prey to your emotions, to anger...
...inquiry that - it cannot be stated enough times - doesn't exist, at Harvard or anywhere else). Beneath his learned, oddly asexual caress, objects come to life and become symbols. A V isn't just a V, it's a chalice, a symbol of the eternal feminine. Chaos is secretly order. Noise is secretly signal...
...Unlike the first two Langdon novels, The Lost Symbol (Doubleday; 509 pages) doesn't deal with the history of the Christian church. The mythology Langdon is decoding is that of the Freemasons (whose motto ordo ab chao, order out of chaos, could be Brown's). Langdon is summoned - dude is always getting summoned - to Washington, D.C., by a mysterious phone call that he thinks is coming from his old friend and mentor Peter Solomon, head of the Smithsonian. Langdon thinks he's going to give a speech at a Smithsonian fundraiser at the Capitol building. But when he shows...
...makes a surprisingly anemic case). There's a feeling at points that he's ticking off moments in history, rather than grappling with them. But it's clearly the personal anecdotes that readers will flock to - those rambunctious tales of young adulthood, like bronco-riding in Montana in order to win votes for JFK - although the revelations are few and far between and his latter years were a gauntlet of seemingly endless tragedy. Still, it's a rare example of a political memoir with staying power...