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Sinister Forces |
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By this, Levenda means something broader than a mix of magic and religion. When he writes of the occult, he means to include whatever is secret, hidden, or unknown. Add this dimension to those of politics and violence, and the century shivers into focus. "Sinister Forces" is about evil in what is now the digital age: Evil 2.0. ~ From the Foreword by Jim Hougan Face-to-face with twenty-five years of research gathered from no less than forty countries, most writers would have looked to come up with any number of spy, horror, and suspense novels suggested by this trove of material. Peter Levenda, however, tackled it head-on. So, he set himself the near-to-impossible task of pulling together such diverse threads as pop culture, archaeology, anthropology, poetry, religion, the occult, and a host of government actions overt and hidden. In return, he has produced the first installment of a thesis that is by turns compelling, cautious, maddening, and intriguing. This book lives with the premise that there is a Satanic undercurrent to American affairs. Since there is a world of clues and indications to support the thesis, but very little qualifies as hard evidence, the author is enmeshed in a labyrinthine task. Given the bewildering enormity of the subject, one can forgive "Sinister Forces" its serious faults, for in recompense we are offered astonishing coincidences, improbable but factual interconnections, occasional exposures of buried government history, outright assassinations and inexplicable historic conjunctions that scream out for explanation where none can be provided. Conspiratorialists will drown in new floods of old forgotten material, rationalists will throw this book across the room, then get around to picking it up and reading a little further before they throw it down again in a fury at the uneasy possibility that the Devil could conceivably also be a part of our ongoing and inexplicable American history. Worse! What if, as Levenda looks to indicate, it all goes back to the earliest American inhabitants, back to the mysterious moundbuilding Pre-Columbian cultures of Kentucky up through the Salem witch trials on to the 20th Century mind control experiments, the obfuscations surrounding UFOs, and Manson, and Sirhan, and November 22 in Dallas? The first of these three volumes of "Sinister Forces" is already ten books in one. Depending on one's reading inclinations, this is either a disaster or a great bargain.
Table of Contents Foreword by Jim Hougan Section One: Deep Background Section Two: Agents of the Devil Section Three: Crossfire Appendix - A Filed Guide to Wandering Bishops
371 pages, 6 x 9, Hardback, Illustrated Price - $29.95 |
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It is Levenda's realization that a matrix of politics and violence is incapable of explaining the demented century that shuddered to an end in Manhatten, not so long ago. What's needed is a
third dimension, and that dimension, he tells us, is "the occult."
