http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/ssm/index.htm#contents
Start reading:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/ssm/ssm00.htm.
Why is it available for free?
Surprisingly, the second link above reads:
You will note at http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/ssm/index.htm the following paragraph:Scanned at sacred-texts.com, December, 2003. J. B. Hare, redactor. This text is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright was not renewed in a timely fashion as required by law at the time. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice of attribution is left intact.
From my own reading of Churchward's books, some of that opinion is true, and it must have indeed served to relegate Churchward's writings to the status of so-called "fringe literature", as I have already pointed out on the topic 'Has Anyone Read "The Lost Continent of Mu"?' in the "General Discussion" forum. I wish Churchward had at least given more detailed and more numerous references about his sources.It doesn't help matters that Churchward's books are largely absent of apparatus such as footnotes or bibliography, and his basic source material cannot be independently confirmed. In his Mu-monomania, he employs circular and tautological reasoning. Often, he will make a startling assertion, and before supporting it, will move on to some other train of thought. At other times, he writes factually about, say, Egyptian mythology, without any clue for the reader as to why this proves anything about Mu. The reader is simultaneously entertained and irritated by this intellectual shell game.
"However, Churchward may have the last laugh yet" -- says the last paragraph on the page, and I most definitely agree.
There are numerous major things in Churchward's books that appear more or less the same in Michel's book. There is no way the former to turn out to be mostly true or false, and the latter not to be.
P.S.
I think it should be known that James Churchward's great-grandson, Jack Churchward (http://www.churchward.com), has a stance that the entire Mu affair is a hoax. (I had a couple of e-mail exchanges with him in mid-2003.) One of the things he said was that no one else has seen the Naacal tablets that Churchward supposedly found and studied in India; another -- that he never served in the military and was never a colonel. Such a tablet is mentioned by Thao on page 52 in the chapter "The Golden Planet". I know the copyright of the beginning book of the series, "The Lost Continent of Mu" has been renewed by that relative, not sure about the rest, nor have I found them on the Internet.
Regarding the claim that James Churchward has never been a colonel, the article
"James Churchward and His Lost Pacific Continent -- Lost Continent or Lost Cause?" by Churchward's god-daughter Joan Tate Griffith. The article, which has been discussed on the topic "Article about the Lost Continent of Mu by Joan T. Griffith" on this forum ("Library, Interviews, Illustrations, Media Releases"), states the following at the end:
There also exists an unpublished biography of James Churchward, "My Friend Churchey and His Sunken Island of Mu", written by his very close friend Percy T. Griffith, father of Joan Griffith (I have already mentioned about it on the topic "El Padre Crespi and His Collection" in the "General History: Events and Lessons" forum). A couple of pages, including the table of contents, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/ganggon/myfriend/. Inquiring Joan Griffith about the biography in late 2003, she told me about the abovementioned article she had written. (Contrary to what the aforementioned web page says, she no longer offers the biography -- the rights have been sold off to another person, as already mentioned. Fortunately, eventually I managed to obtain a copy.) I hope it gets published soon -- you can find a tentative cover at http://www.redgar.net/lifeforces/bookcover.htm, a page on the right holder's website.And, one fact he did not mention to our family, was that he was in British Intelligence in India, which would explain the absence of certain records of James' early background, especially military. This was revealed by Peter Tompkins (who had the information from unimpeachable sources) in his Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids.