Lee M.

Liz Renay was born into small-town life in Mesa, Arizona to a family of religious zealots. Then WWII came and she became a "V-girl," attracting servicemen with her beautiful face and voluptuous figure. Thus began her entry into the world of New York high fashion models and Fifty-Second Street strippers. Fate led her into the underworld, where she became a confidante and girlfriend to important mobsters and shady dealers.

Booker T. Washington fought his way out of slavery to become an educator, statesman, political shaper, and proponent of the "do-it-yourself" idea. In his autobiography, he describes his early life as a slave on a Virginia plantation, his steady rise during the Civil War, his struggle for education, his schooling at the Hampton Institute, and his years as founder and president of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which was devoted to helping minorities learn useful, marketable skills.

New York City, uptown, Harlem. In the 1920s it was the most exciting place in the world. Poets, writers, dancers, and musicians all came together and invented a new American culture - a dazzling and revolutionary African American culture of music and poetry and art. Everyone who was anyone wanted to come to Harlem and hear the music of jazz genius Duke Ellington, the rap-like stylings of Langston Hughes, and the classical lyricism of Countee Cullen.

Worshipful Brother Hextall explores various possible histories of the Hiram Abiff legend in Masonic ritual, focusing largely on noted British alchemist and astrologer Elias Ashmole in the process. He includes speculation on the manufacturing of the Master Mason degree as well as the history of its emergence. And what does the burning of historical Masonic documents in 1720 have to do with all of it? The author explains.

This volume contains a pair of exploratory essays by Masonic scholar William Harvey. The first seeks to explain the origin and meaning of the word Tyler, as well as describing the history and duties that appertain to the official who guards the Doorway of Freemasonry. Harvey's second essay, "The Masonic Apron", begins by chronicling historical usages of the garment in cultures and traditions throughout civilization.

Thomas Milton Stewart (1866-1945) was a physician from Ohio, as well as a prolific, although rather unknown, writer of Freemasonry, Theosophy, and philosophy. This particular piece was originally an oration given by Brother Stewart, on the occasion of December 29, 1909, at the Pike Centennial Anniversary, in Wheeling, West Virginia. He speaks about the concept of True Initiates or Masters of Wisdom.