Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol

Just finished this.   It is actually pretty good, with a spiritual message at the end.

Born In Blood by John Robinson.

         John Robinson offers a different history for the Freemasons which is interesting, linking them back to the Knight Templars rather than than the craftsmen masons who built the cathedrals.  We don't have a good paper trail.   Masons started as a secret society, so the history is obscured.  Read and decide for yourself.  With time, I believe, historians will learn more about the roots of this brotherhood.  I just finished this and am now reading Rosslyn:  Guardian Of The Secrets Of The Holy Grail, by Wallace-Murphy & Hopkins.  It seems much more speculative than Robinson's book, but interesting, nonetheless.

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Blood-Lost-Secrets-Freemasonry/dp/0871316021

The Beginnings of My Masonic Interests.

I first became aware of the Freemasons during college, after reading the works of Hermann Hesse and Carl Jung, two Swiss Freemasons (my son Matt recently traced back part of our family to Switzerland.)   I remember being relieved discovering Jung, after studying Freud and  Behavioralism.  Jung understood that sometimes, trees in dreams were just "trees in dreams" and not phallic symbols.   And we are not just biological machines.   Two books by Hesse that were  important to me were Siddartha and Journey to the East.   Siddhartha got me curious about Buddhism and my mother's family's Japanese heritage.  Also, believe it or not, a role playing game titled Bushido, got me interested in the Samurai.     After studying and living in Japan for 8 years, and coming back to Minnesota, I started exploring the traditions and culture of my father's side of the family.   Journey to The East is a thinly disguised story about Freemasonry.
     I would have to say,  Jung and Hesse, along with Joseph Campbell, were important in the development of my world view.
     I remember trying to find out about Masonry back then, in the early '70s.  But I knew no Masons and we didn't have the World Wide Web at the time.  Things have really changed!