Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion
"A powerful book demonstrating how the Western study of Hinduism, Indian religious texts, and American popular culture have become related to one another in exceptionally intimate and creative ways. Urban refuses to narrate yet another postcolonial narrative about the evil West, producing instead a subtle and much more accurate reading of the cultural encounter that produced, intentionally or not, a new form of erotic mysticism-Western Tantra."—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author ofKali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna