The Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black describes a complete history of the world, from the beginning of time to the present day, based on the beliefs and writings of the secret societies.

From the esoteric account of the evolution of the species to the occult roots of science, from the secrets of the Flood to the esoteric motives behind American foreign policy, here is a narrative history that shows the basic facts of human existence on this planet can be viewed from a very different angle. Everything in this history is upside down, inside out and the other way around.

At the heart of The Secret History of the World is the belief that we can reach an altered state of consciousness in which we can see things about the way the world works that are hidden from us in our everyday, commonsensical consciousness. This history shows that by using secret techniques, people such as Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton and George Washington have worked themselves into this altered state - and been able to access supernatural levels of intelligence.

There have been many books on the subject, but, extraordinarily, no one has really listened to what the secret societies themselves say. The author has been helped in his researches by his friendship with a man who is an initiate of more than one secret society, and in one case an initiate of the highest level.

By the end of The Secret History the reader will see the world differently. It will be evident that a secret philosophy is encoded in the world around us, in public buildings and monuments, in great art and literature, in the arrangement of the pips in an apple, in the names of the days of the week, even in the very stories we tell our children.

Jonathan Black is the nom de plume of Mark Booth. He was educated at Ipswich School and Oriel College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy and Theology. He has worked in publishing for over twenty years, and is currently in charge of Century, an imprint of Random House UK. The Secret History of the World is the outcome of a lifetime spent reading literature in this area, publishing many of the leading authors in the field and hanging around antiquarian bookshops.