I have Amazon's recommendation system to thank for introducing me to the important work of Peter Levenda. Certainly, I would not have sought out this work otherwise. But, I am grateful that I did. Well done, Amazon!
This book is well written, thoroughly documented, and important. The rather bizarre foreward by Jim Hougan contributes nothing at all to the corpus of the book and can be left unread with no context or meaning being lost. Once Levenda does get going in this book, it is relentlessly fascinating. Levenda portrays much of the "dark side" of American political history with style, class, and a proper sense of wonder.
I was particularly interested in the connections Levenda makes to the Nazi and Satanic influences in such CIA initiatives as MK/Ultra and the Kennedy assassinations. Reading this very interesting and well written account motivates me to read the rest of this series and the author's earlier book on Nazi involvement with the occult. It seems that satanism and Nazism have had a more profound influence on modern history than mainstream expositors would otherwise acknowlege.
The book rates four stars instead of five, from my perspective, for two reasons. The author, apparently a fallen away Catholic, has a bias against Christianity that almost at times borders on nastiness. And the book, though spell binding throughout, ends not with a bang but with a whimper. We are left with the distinct impression that the author's main purpose in the last chapter was to set the stage for the next book in the series. Yet, I am now prepared to order that next item. So, perhaps the sneaky little plan is effective. In any case, I strongly recommend this very interesting book to anyone who would understand a bit better the occult aspects of American political history.
Levenda is the best pure "writer" I've encountered in this genre of books. I simply could not put down "Unholy Alliance"! And most of this book is right up there with "Unholy Alliance"; it is readable, fascinating, and well researched. Levenda goes around turning over rocks in this book, and in almost every case I believe he finds sinister, ugly, creepy-crawly, living political poisonous realities that exist and have existed in the crevices of our nation.
The one area where Levenda completely drops the ball in this book is when he tries to explain away the nefarious intrigues of the Jesuit Order as being the handiwork of some mysterious "wandering bishops." Gimme a break. Read "Transformation of the Republic" by C.T. Wilcox, or any book by Avro Manhattan, or "Vatican Assassins" by Eric Jon Phelps, and see how infantile is this claim by Levenda. (Sorry, Pete, I love your work, but I had to hit you on that one; you deserved it, for not giving your readers the straight dope here.)
