Bohemian Grove: Cult Of Conspiracy

by Mike Hanson

They secretly meet for seventeen days each July at a place called the "Bohemian Grove, " a remote forest of ancient redwood trees in the deep Northern California woods. Some 1,500 in number, their membership rolls include current and former U.S. Presidents, heavy-hitting corporate chieftains, and high government officials. Mingling among them are a number of Hollywood movie stars, Broadway producers, famous musicians, authors, painters and poets. These are America's most powerful men.

The celebrity names you'd easily recognize, but chances are you've never heard of the Bohemian Club.

For most the club's long history, the public could only speculate as to what these men were doing behind closed doors. Now the truth can finally be revealed.

Mike Hanson is a first-hand eyewitness who has been inside the "Bohemian Grove, " and successfully emerged with the first video evidence ever brought out of the power elite's exclusive compound. He peers behind the deep, green foliage and twisted vines, and the moss-covered brown limbs and trunks of ancient, gnarled trees to discover what really goes on inside.

On this, the 130-year anniversary of the founding of the Bohemian Club, "Bohemian Grove: Cult of Conspiracy" promises to uncover the "Grove's" hidden history and expose the secrets of the redwoods.

Genres: Politics, Conspiracy Theories, Nonfiction, True Crime

446 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2004

Reviews

[Marc]

Amazing play by play account of how Mike Hanson and Alex Jones were the first reporters to get footage of the "Cremation of Care Ceremony" of The Bohemian Grove out to the general public; however, I was very intrigued by the Epilogue section of the book that gave the analysis of how 9/11 has the Illuminati signature written all over it. The only criticism I have of this chapter is that Lexington and Concorde (The first shot fired during the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain) took place on April 19, 1775 and not April 19, 1776 as the book alleges. An honest mistake or deliberate to fit the numerological MO? Anyways, despite that, a very good and entertaining read indeed despite the fact that Alex would say, "This is not funny, this is a life and death situation, if you're laughing, you won't be when the come and get you!"

[Sarah]

This book ruined Jon Ronson for me. When Hansen begins to call Ronson a liar I really wanted him to be wrong. I checked out Ronson's documentary that covers the same incident as this book and then Ronson's book... Ronson catches himself in the lie since his personal narratives from the documentary and his book contradict one another. I have to thank Mike Hansen for pointing this out.

The older I become and the more I read, I believe less and less that I read.

"Ishtar, another cultural descendant of Athena, was the most important female deity in the Middle East before the rise of the monotheistic religions.... Ishtar is also known as Venus." This on page 80 and although there are other leaps of logic in this section, this particularly jumped out at me because Venus is the Roman name for Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and lust, and not Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom (symbolized by an owl) and war. A quick Google search connects Ishtar with Aphrodite, not Athena. It might sound like a quibble, but Greek mythology is something I'm relatively well versed in and once I read one thing that is inaccurate, it puts the rest of the information in the book to question.

The real question, of course, is what is going on at The Bohemian Grove? Is it a place where The New World Order is being planned between child sacrifice? Or is it a place for world leaders to burn away the cares of the world and party like frat boys?

I don't know and neither does Hansen. He saw a ceremony where an effigy was burned and jumped to concluding his initial hypothesis was correct. I don't think he's deliberately lying like Ronson, but there are leaps in logic.

[Wil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book and topic

[Kitty]

I wanted to learn more about the Bohemian Club, but was more curious about its early days, particularly pre-1900's. This book focused on the more recent years. I have no idea how accurate this book is, but the author clearly had some strong, negative feelings about it. I read maybe 3/4's of the book, but could not stomach any more than that.