Author Talk: Devin Thomas O'Shea "The Veiled Prophet"

Join Tomorrow Bookstore for an author conversation with Devin Thomas O'Shea on his new book, The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the struggle for St. Louis with book influencer Nathan Shuherk (@schizophrenicreads).

This event will be held at Tomorrow Bookstore and books will be available to purchase with a ticket ahead of time or at the event. There will be an opportunity to meet the author and get your book signed!

About The Veiled Prophet

A 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.

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 At first glance, the event seems outdated and clownish, but in truth the Veiled Prophet Society has functioned as an exclusive club for the “city fathers,” where solidarity is built between wealthy men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. Since the Gilded Age, the Prophet has faced resistance from orphans armed with pea-shooters, Communist Party organizers during the Depression, Civil Rights icons, and renegade debutantes. The Ferguson uprising of 2014 was only the most recent challenge to the Prophet’s influence.As the fight for the soul and streets of St. Louis intensifies, it’s more critical than ever that we expose the sordid history of these powerful, masked figures and their control over our democracy.

“Devin Thomas O’Shea’s The Veiled Prophet inducts readers into white supremacy’s back room, revealing the pomp and circumstance of racism, the gaudy esoterica that is presumed to elevate brute domination into something sublime and mysterious. O’Shea tells the story of the racial phantasmagoria of Midwestern elites with great clarity and insight.”
—Greg Grandin, author of America, América: A New History of the New World

About Devin Thomas O'Shea:

Devin Thomas O’Shea is a writer in St. Louis. His work has appeared in The Nation, Slate, The Iowa Review, Jacobin, Boulevard, and elsewhere.

About Nathan Shuherk:

Nathan Shuherk (@schizophrenicreads) is a nonfiction book reviewer, influencer, writer, and MFA student living in Indianapolis.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Tomorrow Bookstore, 882 Massachusetts Avenue, Indianapolis, United States

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