This book is a great example of late 19th Century spirit literature. The Author, Col. Henry Olcott, wrote this book after visiting two brothers from Vermont that purportedly could contact and communicate with the dead. Olcott visited the brother's small farm in Vermont, and stayed for a period of three weeks. During that time, he saw around 400 spirit's materialize right in front of his eyes. He drew illustrations of every apparition, and included them in this book. Any person interested in spirit communication, or the history of spiritualism, should read this book first before reading any other. It was a valuable resource for me.

Henry Steel Olcott was an incongruent, eccentric character who on careful analysis was one of the most able and radical free thinkers that the USA produced, responsible for uplifting the cultures of Sri Lanka and India under the yoke of British imperialism. This book tells his story.

American books speaking of Buddhism start with Vietnam, the Beat Generation, Hippies and Ajhan Chah as a brief history of the religion in the USA. Actually, this history should be extended all the way back to the 1860s and specifically to Olcott, one of the first converts to Buddhism. The 1880s were very significant.

He established the Theosphical society with Helena Blavatsky and moved from Spiritualism to Egyptian religions before settling on a lifelong affair with Oriental religions after a vision he had.

Having moved to India, he established and bolstered movements battling against missionaries, swamping the native cultures and generated an anti missionary toolbox based on their own methods. These succeeded. He also established strings of Buddhist schools on the Island and empowered Hinduism and native Indian religions including Islam through his Theosophical journals which actually turned a profit. He also attempted to unify the Buddhist world by harbouring links with Japan. What is surprising is that so much of what he put his efforts into bore fruit.

This book exposes this little known American hero (to some)and the creolised religious response he initiated. The book is highly critical and well researched.

At a time when the USA is exporting Christian Evangelism, Olcott was the exception who exported something else and influenced the European Theosophical movement and seekers in ancient systems of knowledge.

An invaluable and rare reference of a little known indomitable figure.