When we received a reply from a Grand Lodge, we compared which authors and books they recommended as being authoritative for them with the replies from the other Grand Lodges. These are the authors that the Grand Lodges recommended:
 

44% - of the Grand Lodges recommended Coil’s Masonic Encyclopedia, by Henry Wilson Coil.
36% - The builders by Joseph Fort Newton
32% - Mackey’s Revised Encyclopedia of Freemasonry by Albert G. Mackey
24% - Introduction to Freemasonry by Carl H. Claudy
24% - The Newly-Made Mason by H. L. Haywood
20% - A Masonic Reader’s Guide by Alphonse Cerza
20% - History of Freemasonry by Robert F. Gould
20% - The Craft and Its Symbols by Allen E. Roberts
16% - Morals and Dogma by Albert Pike
 

    Notice that the Grand Lodges, by their responses, revealed that Coil, Newton, and Mackey are the three leading Masonic authorities.
    Because of the high esteem in which these authors are held by the Grand Lodges, we will often document our analysis of Masonry from their texts. At the same time, we have not neglected the other Masonic authors recommended by the Grand Lodges. We have tried to quote fairly from them all.
    We have done all of this so that Masons cannot say that we have based our arguments on material that no Mason would consider authoritative and reliable. Masons must acknowledge that these authors and books do represent their most authoritative interpreters of Freemasonry.
 

John Ankerberg & John Weldon