By Allen E. Roberts
Reviewed by Bro. Jason F. Hicks
This work is a comprehensive attempt (although Roberts says in his preface that it was four decades in the building and is not complete) to distill down into a book many topics and thoughts for a brother to digest. His broad sections are philosophy & opinion, history & opinion, biography and fiction drama. This book at times can be dense but simply put to back so much into a book is almost impossible without density.
The content in this first section is mainly based on speeches or other writings that brother Roberts did throughout the years. It is quite fitting that the first chapter (and the namesake for the book) was for the Tennessee Lodge of Research’s charter meeting in 1985.
Quite possibly my favorite section in the book was the biographies. Some are familiar like President Harry S. Truman, who Roberts calls “the foremost freemason of the twentieth century”, President George Washington, and Pythagoras who we hear about during degree work but frankly do not study enough. Then there are exposed to others like Robert Burns the Scottish freemason and poet and Harold V.B. Voorhs who remarkably belonged to over eighty (80) masonic bodies and presided over thirty-five (35) of them. Whom helped to organize the Grand College of Rites, the Allied Masonic Degrees, the Masonic Order of the Bath, the Knight Masons, the Knights of York Cross of Honour and the Society of Blue Friars.
In closing, I would recommend this book to give a mason an introduction to the fraternity and some of its luminaries.
