Customer Reviews

Hare Krishna in America

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This is the work of a scholar who joined the Hare Krishna movement in order to gather information. Some of the book is a first-person account, some of it is accounts from group members, some of it is statistical data, and some of it is history of the group.

Chapter 2 deals with the author's relations with bona fide members. It was painful for me to read that chapter because it reminded me of my own experiences with religious zealots.

Chapter 3 presents statistics on the age, socioeconomic status, and educational level of most members at the time of joining the group. I did not know how these statistics compared with those of the population as a whole, so I wondered which of these statistics were significant.

If you remember the Seventies, you may remember the group's notorious fund-raising activity at the nation's airports. In Chapter 7, the author tells us that the resultant notoriety forced the leaders to search for other ways of raising money. The author recounted a few of the psychological ploys used by the members, but he failed to mention the most nefarious ploy of all: the member would hand the airport patron a brilliantly colored, hard-bound book under pretenses of offering it as a gift, and afterward ask for a payment. The airport patron, embarrassed for having believed that such an expensive item could be a gift, is thus manipulated into purchasing a book which he did not want.

I also recommend a couple of very interesting first-person accounts (0252065662, 0595312640).

The pages of this book are bound with a very weak glue. If you are ordering this book for a library, be sure to allocate some money for the bindery.

this is one of the best books i have ever read. it is so insightful, knowing and intelligently fabulous. but i don't have to continue this praise, you know you've read it too. so email me at ronen00@hotmail.com, so we can talk about it more.