Description
Book SynopsisPrizewinner in the twenty-fifth annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS for 2004, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation.What is New Age? Crystals, meditation and astrology. T''ai Chi, Reiki and Feng Shui. Reflexology, aromatherapy and past-life regression. Esalen, the Findhorn Community and Damanhur. Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra and David Spangler.But many such examples of alternative spiritualities are explicitly not New Age - and few practitioners now describe themselves as New Age. Scholars cannot agree on a definition of New Age, or even whether it exists at all!
Trade ReviewThis guide to the New Age is a helpful introduction that not only provides insightful descriptions of practices and beliefs, but also reviews a wide range of academic and nonacademic perspectives. For the serious student or researcher! Kemp provides an excellent guide to the academic resources that can be brought to bear on the phenomenon. Concise but challenging. An excellent guide to the academic resources that can be brought to bear on the phenomenon. This is a very good book. Indeed, as a basic introduction to the many facets of the 'New Age' phenomenon, it would be hard to beat. It manages to combine descriptive accounts of various aspects of New Age spirituality with reflection on its wider significance, and to do so in a highly readable format. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the way it offers summaries of a vast number of existing studies, both published and unpublished, demonstrating a remarkable ability by the author to combine large amounts of material into a readable synthesis ... a well written book that deserves to be widely read and appreciated. This guide to the New Age is a helpful introduction that not only provides insightful descriptions of practices and beliefs, but also reviews a wide range of academic and nonacademic perspectives. For the serious student or researcher! Kemp provides an excellent guide to the academic resources that can be brought to bear on the phenomenon. Concise but challenging. An excellent guide to the academic resources that can be brought to bear on the phenomenon. This is a very good book. Indeed, as a basic introduction to the many facets of the 'New Age' phenomenon, it would be hard to beat. It manages to combine descriptive accounts of various aspects of New Age spirituality with reflection on its wider significance, and to do so in a highly readable format. Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the way it offers summaries of a vast number of existing studies, both published and unpublished, demonstrating a remarkable ability by the author to combine large amounts of material into a readable synthesis ... a well written book that deserves to be widely read and appreciated.
Table of ContentsI. Overview and Starting Definition; 2. The Course: A Case Study; 3. History of Ideas; 4. Philosophy; 5. Anthropology; 6. Sociology; 7. Psychology; 8. Non-Academic Approaches to New Age; 9. Academic Literature Survey; 10. Future; References.
