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The History of Freemasonry in Virginia. By RICHARD A. RUTYNA and PETER C. STEWART. Lanham, Md., New York, and Oxford: University Press of America, Inc., for the Grand Lodge A.F. & A.M. of Virginia, 1998. xii, 561 pp. $30.00.
THE Freemasons have long been America's most famous secret society; serious works on their history are rare, however, and the Masons themselves are often only background material for studies of antimasonry. Richard A. Rutyna and Peter C. Stewart's History of Freemasonry in Virginia is a serious attempt to address the lack of scholarship and to separate Masonic myth from history, an effort they compare to the "fifth labor of Hercules" (p. ix). The book's strength lies not in its myth busting, however, but in Rutyna and Stewart's highly detailed study of the membership and organization of the Masonic lodges in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The authors cover the fraternity from the revolutionary era until 1997, although the twentieth century is included almost as an afterthought. The majority of the work,...