The Secret History of the Universe, Mark Booth
The Secret History of the Universe, Mark Booth
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The Secret History of the Universe
How Ancient Wisdom Made the Modern World

Author: Mark Booth

Narrator: John Lee

Unabridged: 10 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/02/2026

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

“Mythology and ancient esoteric beliefs are finally found in cutting-edge science.”—Rick Rubin, bestselling author of The Creative Act From the author of the global bestseller The Secret History of the World comes an epic new history of the relationship between spiritual belief and cutting-edge science. Includes beautiful black-and-white illustrations throughout.Human beings have a deep-rooted desire to find something worth believing in. But there is a widespread assumption that science is at odds with spiritual belief and offers the only intelligent way to think about the universe.In this epic new history, Mark Booth offers an alternative view, showing us how the great geniuses of modern science, from Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla, and Albert Einstein to today’s architects of AI, turned instead to secret, mystical, and “higher” teachings, including Indian mysticism and Freemasonry, to make sense of the strange phenomena they were encountering. Experimenting with alternative states of consciousness, they risked isolation and even madness.Here then is the dark, dramatic story of modern science—of love, betrayal, attempted murder, multiple suicides, sexual experimentation, and transgression—from which unfolds the awe-inspiring discoveries which have transformed our lives for good, and potentially for evil. For just as the work of J. Robert Oppenheimer and others ended the Second World War but brought humanity to the brink of extinction, so, too, has the spectacular growth of AI.The result of many years of research, and deep conversations with prominent academics in the field, this book takes us on an exhilarating journey, in the company of some of the greatest minds of our age, toward a deeper understanding of our place in the cosmos.

About Mark Booth

Mark Booth was educated at Ipswich School and Oriel College, Oxford, where he studied Philosophy and Theology. After a long career in publishing, he now writes full time. Booth is the author of the global bestseller The Secret History of the World, The Secret History of Dante: Unearthing the Mysteries of the Inferno and The Sacred History of the World: How Angels, Mystics and Higher Intelligence Made our World. His books are the result of a lifetime spent reading literature in this area, publishing many of the leading authors in the field and hanging around antiquarian bookshops. He and his wife live in the south of England.

About John Lee

John Lee is the winner of numerous Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration. He has twice won acclaim as AudioFile’s Best Voice in Fiction & Classics. He also narrates video games, does voice-over work, and writes plays.

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Quotes

“I’ve been reviewing science fiction and fantasy books for twenty years. The reality, as shown in this book, is as exciting and strange and compelling as anything I’ve ever read.” James Buxton, author of The Wishing Tree, Pity, and I Am the Blade

“This history carries you along on a wild ride through discoveries in science, all the while entertaining you with stories of often troubled and flamboyant geniuses. Miraculously easy to understand—even for the most scientifically illiterate people like me.” Philip Carr-Gomm, a leader and former Chosen Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids; author of Druid Mysteries: Ancient Wisdom for the 21st Century and coauthor with Richard Heygate of The Book of English Magic

“Booth’s book captures the creative interior of scientific discovery, the part that happens before the mathematics, before the experiment, before the Nobel Prize. It reminds us that the hidden mysteries are not uncovered by logic alone. They are first glimpsed in the intuitive flash, the symbolic image, the imaginative.” Robert Lomas, coauthor with Christopher Knight of The Hiram Key and Uriel’s Machine and author of The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century: Nikola Tesla, the Forgotten Genius of Electricity

“Mark Booth’s The Secret History of the Universe makes the complex so clear and magnetic. He connects many strands of human consciousness to make a beautiful wholeness. He has a warmth, a loving presence which unites the head and heart on our quest to self-discovery. Thanks are due to him for holding our hands on that journey.” Pamela Young, author of Hope Street

“Mark Booth’s understanding of the universe is very close to the way I see it. The Secret History of the Universe has an important message for the world.” Lorna Byrne, author of Angels in My Hair and Stairways to Heaven

“Booth has written that rarest of all things: a book that makes you see the world in an entirely new way.” T. J. Andrews coauthor with Simon Scarrow, of Warrior and Warlord of Britannia

“Weaving a tapestry between physics, art, literature, philosophy, mysticism, and our immediate world, Mark Booth beautifully articulates the mythic dimension in historical events.” Daniel Kramer, former visiting professor at Harvard and Brown universities and artistic director of English National Opera

“Amusing, popular but still profound, and above all much needed in an age that has lost its way—a remarkable achievement.” James Hanning, author of Love and Deception: Philby in Beirut and The Bookseller of Hay

“What we’ve been taught to define as ‘reality’ will never look quite the same again once the revelations of this breakthrough book are taken on board. Booth shows that surrounding us everywhere, in all directions, from the unimaginably large to the infinitesimally small, is MYSTERY.” Graham Hancock, author of Magicians of the Gods, Supernatural, and America Before

“Mark Booth’s head-spinning The Secret History of the Universe reveals the influence of the work of great occultists and seers on scientists. By the end of the book, you will see both scientific discovery and the universe in a new light, both strange and glorious.” Conner Habib, author of Hawk Mountain

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