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