[Eliptony Core Sample] Gru-Hem

Hancock, Graham, The Sign and the Seal, (Simon & Schuster, 1992).

Remember when Graham Hancock used to do his own sloppy, ethically compromised research? Those were the days, back before it was all aliens and Sphinxes and underwater pyramids and such. He was once the East Africa correspondent for The Economist, and like many reporters, a complete victim of 'interest capture,' in this case by the Marxist dictatorship of Ethiopia. While noodling around down there filing his Walter Duranty impressions and taking Mengistu's blood-soaked cash, he stumbled upon the local tradition that the Ethiopian Christian cathedral at Axum, not some two-bit Spielberg set, was the home of the Ark of the Covenant. In a book combining gripping on-the-ground 'I was there' narrative journalism (interestingly complicated by the fact that his former patrons' filthy regime was collapsing around him), interestingly redacted and popularized Ethiopian tradition, Freemasonic crazitude, and the Holy Grail (because why not?), Graham Hancock pretty convincingly earned bestseller status. Plus, hey, Templars and Prester John. Great, great fun, of the kind that drills into a lot of underground streams.

Honorable Mentions: Harpur, Patrick, Daimonic Reality; Heckethorn, Charles William, Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries (2 vols).