DEVIN O'SHEA presents THE VEILED PROPHET: SECRET SOCIETIES, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR ST. LOUIS; Thursday, October 22 @ 6:30 p.m.

About this event

On Thursday October 22, we’re excited to welcome author Devin O’Shea, to discuss his extraordinary new book, The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis. This is an entertaining and provocative look at the secret society that has controlled St. Louis for over a century, revealing how shadowy elites organize themselves against working-class power. This is a Missouri story, and we can’t wait to hear it! As usual, the event starts at 6:30 p.m. We suggest you show up early for this one! Every December in downtown St. Louis, the city's upper crust attend a garish costume party that doubles as a debutante's ball. The daughters of high society are paraded to the throne of a cloaked monarchical figure, and bow to the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. At first glance, the event seems outdated and clownish, but in truth the Veiled Prophet Society has functioned as an exclusive club for the "city fathers," where solidarity is built between wealthy men who head major U.S. corporations, banks, and control whole industries. At the Veiled Prophet's Ball, these titans of capital come together to crown one of their daughters the Queen of Love and Beauty, and celebrate the breaking of strikes, the sabotage of protests, and the enforcement of racial hierarchies. Devin Thomas O'Shea's The Veiled Prophet is the definitive history of the Veiled Prophet Society in all its violence and pageantry, offering a colorful alternate history of the United States through the lens of the Midwestern elite. O'Shea follows the Veiled Prophet Society from its origins in the wake of the 1877 general strike, through the 1904 World's Fair, to the height of the Prophet's--and St. Louis's--influence during the Cold War. The Veiled Prophet examines the unexpected ways this secret society has shaped the course of history, from the CIA to the Vietnam War to the assassination of Martin Luther King. Yet the power wielded by the Veiled Prophet has not gone uncontested.…