Rating: 
Summary: 2/3 Fantastic; 1/3 Wacky
Review: The first 2/3 of this book is stunning and enormously revealing and I would advise every American to read it!
Unfortunately, the last 1/3 of the book, the author gets into pure speculative alien garbage which goes a long way towards undermining what he'd already written. You may as well tear that last part out, it's so bad.
He's brilliant as long as he sticks to the secular stuff he can prove; he's embarrasses himself and those who might otherwise be solidly in his corner when he veers off into reckless Art Bell alien sensationalism.
Rating: 
Summary: One big pile of garbage
Review: Poorly written, amazingly contrite and if you like to leap, this book will be great for you because you are required to make so many leaps you'll need to give your legs a rest. I can't believe I wasted time reading this garbage.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fabulous Book Everybody Should Read
Review: This is a fabulous Book which everybody should read. I have been reading and re-reading this book for weeks, checking the sources it cites and using it as a basis for a more in-depth study of the REAL HISTORY of POWER IN THE UNITED STATES and around the globe. Highly detailed historical facts which can all be confirmed in other sources.....put the history of the USA and the world into an entirely different light than we were all taught in school. Read this book and become informed of REAL HISTORY and how REAL POWER works in the world today. THIS INFORMATION IS RIVITING AND INVALUABLE! A manual for life! After reading this book, you will never again see the world around you in the same way.
Rating: 
Summary: Would have been more enjoyable if.....
Review: Would have been more enjoyable if Marrs stuck to current era conspiracy theories and left the "God was an Astronaut" ramblings out of this book. Then again, he did write Alien Agenda, didn't he? This book is chronogically ordered. We have Mr Marrs starting off with the US Presidential Elections of 2000 (so the book is pre-9/11) and going back in time. He stops at significant events along the way and gives commentaries on these events (e.g the Clinton Presidency and his theory that the Bilderbergers put him into office - is there a need to vote any more?). About 75% of the book concerns Marrs' tireless attempts - sometimes with conviction - to connect almost every major institution in the world from the Catholic Church to the Fed, to the IFR to the UN. Of course, as with perhaps every conspiracy theory book I have ever read, Marrs also does some obligatory finger-pointing at the Freemasons, the Illiminati, and their respective associate organisations. Marrs does not seems to like bankers or financiers either. The entire cast of the Rothschilds, investment banks like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, etc are all painted with the same brush - they're all part of the global consipracy...to bring back the British Empire!!! ROTFL!!! If he has stopped there, I would have said Rule by Secrecy was a pretty good book. But Mr Marrs went on to talk about aliens visiting earth during the Mesopotamian period. And we're not talking about the aliens running across the border to look for jobs here! But given that he also wrote Alien Agenda (which I can't say I've had the time to read yet)....perhaps I am being too harsh on him. My conclusion: I read the book whole holidaying somewhere in the South Pacific. As a holiday book, I would say it was a pretty fair read. Otherwise maybe you prefer comics instead?
Rating:
Summary: Jim Marrs, anti-historian, anti-scientific
Review: That he isn't a historian is clear to me. He is also anti-science. Here's one example that should be sufficient to show what a weak mind for science he has. On page 381 he continued to refer to a Sumerian Creation Epic as if it is based on a real possibility. "a most plausible explanation for the present composition of our solar system." --he writes. He mixes present geological and astronomical facts with these supposed Sumerian stories and tries to weave this stuff together so as to make the Sumerian stories more credible (kind of like what he does with his other history stories). He writes: "Life on Earth evolved based on its one-year orbit around the sun, the solar year. Life on Nibiru developed based on its one-year orbit around the sun--3,600 years to Earthlings. It then stands to reason that life on Nibiru would have evolved somewhat sooner than on Earth. ...." Well what's wrong with this picture? Poor Jim Marrs can't figure this one out because he is either a dimwit or maybe a crafty (?) operative for some ruling-elite think-tank given the task to write about some real conspiracies and mix it up with nut-case ideas so as to discredit through association anyone who talks about these real conspiracies. (His accusations that the communist movement was supported by the secret ruling elites for their own evil ends also lends me to think that he is either an operative or a useful tool of some capitalist think-tank out to discredit the socialist movement.) Any planet that orbits the Sun in 3,600 years is not going to be a planet that can evolve life. Such an orbit, elliptical or otherwise, would mean that most of the time (or all of the time if not elliptical) the planet would be in the frozen outer reaches of the solar system. Life as science knows it requires liquid water. That should have been the end of the "Sumerian" myth story for most people, but not Jim Marrs, he goes on weaving further impossibilities and implausibilities. I won't waste anymore time with more examples, because a waste it truly is.
Rating:
Summary: Good survey of conspiracy, whether or not you believe
Review: For those who are interested in learning about conspiracy theories (and one doesn't necessarily have to believe in them to know about them or to enjoy this book from a stylistic point-of-view), I would recommend this book as a wonderful primer. The structure of the book is fascinating as it backwards from the present-day to the ancient past. A lot of the content presented may not be "gospel truth", but there's a chance that they maybe more true than what is presented in the mainstream media. One of my small beefs with the book is the fact that it is unfavourably slanted against innocuous groups like the freemasons, and the original Bavarian Illuminati (they may not actually be evil Nazi-esque bad guys, but a society of egalitarian free-thinkers which had to be secretive as their concepts were 200 years ahead of their time.) This presentation could be due to sloppy research or an ingrained personal bias , but I would encourage anyone to look at all sides of the story and question anything in the book (and I imagine that Jim Marrs, being a freethinker, would want you to as well).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Let go of your preconceived notions of what is truth. If you want a book that presents the facts and all of the possible outcomes, this is it. Religous zealots will not be to happy with the informaion contained here in as it questions every possible beleif system. Read this at the risk of creating your self anew.
Rating:
Summary: Confusing
Review: I grant this book two stars for the following reasons: the author made an effort to write this book and the book has a number of interesting facts. Unfortunately, the book is not well supported and it is a rather scrambled and jumbled hodgepodge of assertions and facts. Somehow, one could take seriously the contents of this book because of its matter-of-fact tone and the serious nature of its message, that of a conspiracy against an entire nation (perhaps the world). I picked this book up in the hopes that it would lay this idea of a NWO and secret societies involved in government and present it in a realistic fashion. I gravitated to this book because it did not get too in depth about UFOs or how our government officials are actually aliens or whatever other strange assertions many of these conspiracy theorists concoct. The book alludes to a believable motive behind the Kennedy assassination and talks a great deal about wealth and its influence on government. That information was a big plus. I was not at all convinced about the information that was used to tie religion and secret societies. A church is not a religion as well as a religion does not make a church. Such claims that Jesus Christ was somehow affiliated with a secret society and was privy to mystical, or magical, knowledge is nonsensical and created to deceive. It is true that Roman christianity was a creation prepetuated by Constantine and the Roman Empire, but to downplay and discredit Jesus and his apostles is in itself a heresy of incredible proportion. For you must ask yourself: What is Christianity without Christ? The Christian faith does not thrive now because of secret societies--because it is not a secret. The miracles of Jesus are not remembered today because they sounded great in the written word--they are remembered because they actually happened. This book does not do justice to its message of the power of secrecy and it does a complete injustice to Christianity by binding masonic philosophy and beliefs with religion. The distinction is made: occult versus religion. This book did not reach my expectations. Reference William Cooper for a better understanding of this topic and refer to David Icke for the most bizarre approach to the perpetuation of this topic.
Rating: 
Summary: A Grand Compendium of Conspiracy
Review: Jim Marrs's book, Rule by Secrecy, is certainly ambitious. It is no less than a compendium of more than 20 major conspiracies into a grand unified theory of conspiracy. The book is certainly a good one for conspiracy buffs to have in their bookcase, because it summarizes all the major conspiracies pretty well, from the Baigent and Leigh "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" theories on the Knights Templar and the Merovingians to the manipulations of the Federal Reserve. Marrs is particularly strong on the financial conspiracies (House of Rothschild, Morgans, Rockefellers, the Fed) and on the CFR/Trilateral/Bilderberger family of foreign policy conspiracies. I found the book somewhat weak in handling the Roswell/Area 51/Greys/Abduction family of conspiracies -- (although the aliens certainly have their place in Marrs's scheme of things), and was disappointed that he did not provide a more thorough Kennedy assassination scenario. The book is well written and methodically researched -- a tour through the authors in its bibliography would keep a good psychoanalyst busy for years -- but like all conspiracy works, it does suffer from leaps of faith, and enough logical sophistry to choke a pony. This being said, the book did not fail to entertain, and I spent about a week with it. It is a good reference work to have if you are a student of conspiracy because of its broad nature. It is also a good introductory work to studying conspiracies because it covers so much ground.
Rating:
Summary: Rule by Secrecy: History of Secret Society Power
Review: RULE BY SECRECY is a somewhat loose synchonization of various conspiracy researchers that makes an attempt to bring the whole Master Plan of the ages to light. Author Jim Marrs fails in this. Marrs takes his main themes and ideas from David Icke, Zecharia Sitchin, and the authors of HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL. There is a lot of great information, and speculation, as to who actually controls the world and the methods by which they exercise control. Since RULE BY SECRECY is published by a major company, Harper Collins, and IS in mainstream circulation unlike most other conspiracy books, it functions in its purpose of revealing some pertinient knowledge, but not the real thing. I recommend reading up to page 360, because after that Marrs goes off "the establishment" deep end with ancient astronauts and visitors from outer space rather than focusing on the ancient war between revealed truth and esoteric doctrines. Marrs' book traces its history backward, from events as recent as the election 2000 canidates Bush and Gore and the Persian Gulf war in 1991 to ancient Greece and the Middle East. The histories and formations of many secret societies are given, and especially their interest in starting and manipulating the outcomes of wars to serve their goals. Marrs goes to great length to avoid being 'anti-Semitic' in his theories, but looking between the lines, Jews are more than proportionately named in this book as being bankers and conspiracy masterminds. RULE BY SECRECY is far from perfect; it attempts too much in too short of space, but is still a great source of insight on how secret societies covertly exercise control of the world's affairs.
| 
