The Rise of Modern Mythology, 1680-1860

" . . . peerless . . . " —The Key Reporter" . . . this book is a first. It will be a standard . . . Comprehensiveness as well as the clarity of the headnotes should make it endure." —Choice" . . . so good as it stands . . . one should simply be happy to have it." —The Journal of the History of Ideas " . . . an original, compendious, and highly useful contribution to historical and mythographical scholarship." —The American Scholar"The Rise of Modern Mythology is a voice of reason in the contemporary maelstrom of international religious violence and American pluralism; more than any book I know, it exposes the roots of the Western appropriation of non-Western mythologies, from Lawrence of Arabia and Omar Khayyam to Tibetan Buddhism in Hollywood and Krishna Consciousness in airports.

This is a book that we need now." —Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, The University of Chicago