Illuminati: The History of a Conspiracy Theory

The Order of the Illuminati was a secret society of intellectuals, judges, soldiers, politicians and poets who genuinely sought to infiltrate and overturn the system of world power from within.Their ambitions were progressive and democratic at a time, the late eighteenth century, when Church and monarchy were all powerful.Even dukes and princes joined - but in reality their effects were minimal.Within a few years of its founding, the order was outed and banned, its leaders prosecuted, exiled and shamed, and its life was over.But shortly after came the French Revolution, and so shocking was the upheaval and carnage that, in the absence of an adequate-seeming explanation, the Illuminati were blamed - and so the conspiracy theory was born. Grippingly told, richly peopled and based on original research, this is the true story that lies behind the original conspiracy theory from which all others have since derived, as well as the story of the theory itself as it recurred over and over again