“The Greatest Men’s Party On Earth: Inside The Bohemian Grove” 1974 (SOLD) The Cary Collection

VAN DER ZEE, John 

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

1974

VG/ VG

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Founded by San Francisco newspapermen around the turn of the century. what distinguishes this club from others just as prestigious, though, is the Grove, the summer encampment held every July on 3000 isolated acres of redwood forest north of the Bay Area for which the great and powerful from around the world interrupt their affairs, if only for a weekend. ‘John van der Zee, from Healdsburg California, posed as a waiter at the Bohemian Grove in the summer of 1972, the Club’s 100th year, and wrote the 1974 book The Greatest Men’s Party on Earth. Subtitled “Inside the Bohemian Grove,” It combines his first hand observations of camp life with extensive historical research and information gathered from interviews of club members to present an overview of the club and its encampment. Chapters include a discussion of the founding of the club by newsmen and artistic types and the subsequent evolution of the group to a more socially and politically prominent organization financed by those of greater wealth, with visual and performing artists and musicians accepted as associate members. Van der Zee writes about Herbert Hoover’s role as an honored participant in the annual encampments and describes and interprets a lakeside talk, a variety show with famous performers, and the Grove’s annual play that is staged with considerable effort and expense at a large outdoor theater within the Grove. Chapter nine, titled “The Bomb” recounts networking activities by Ernest Lawrence at the Grove that resulted in financial support for his nuclear physics research, and it tells of a secret meeting at the Grove during the second world war where scientists made key decisions about how to develop the atomic bomb. The Grove’s summer camps are still much as van der Zee describes, although there are now some African-American members, and, as a result of court decisions, there are now female workers. Informative book! ‘