Dr. Richard B.” Rick” Spence is professor emeritus of History at the University of Idaho, where he taught from 1986 to 2020. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1981), and taught there as a visiting assistant professor from 1981to 1985. His primary areas of study are Modern Russian, Modern European, Middle Eastern and Military History.

Dr. Spence’s research interests include Russian and military history, espionage, occultism, secret societies, anti-Semitism and true crime. His previous work for The Great Courses/Wondrium includes, The Real History of Secret Societies (2019) Crimes of the Century: A Selective History of Infamy (2021) and the upcoming Secrets of the Occult.

Spence’s major published works include Boris Savinkov: Renegade on the Left (1991), Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly (2002), Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult (2008), and Wall Street and the Russian Revolution, 1905-1925 (2017). He is the author of numerous articles in Revolutionary Russia, Intelligence and National Security, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism, American Communist History, The Historian and other journals. He has also contributed to New Dawn and other popular publications. His other projects include the mysterious conspiracy figure James Shelby Downard, the deadly Eddystone munitions plant explosion of 1917, and connections between rocket engineer-occultist Jack Parsons and espionage.