Hinduism Invades America by Wendell Thomas, 1st ed.

Hinduism Invades America, Wendell Thomas. Beacon Press, New York. First edition, 1930. 300 pp. Fair condition, no dustjacket. Soiled and worn cover has bumped corners, heavily tanned spine with tears, horizontal and vertical. Soiled edges with foxing (spots). Foxing on the endpapers. Occasional stains on clean, unmarked pages. Bumped lower page corners.

Thomas writes in his foreword: “This work is not an attack on Hinduism…. Nor is it a defense of Hinduism. Nor is it a defense of Christianity or anything else. It is simply a study of the amazing adventure of an Eastern faith in a Western land.” This volume includes a chapter on Swami Yogananda and his Yogoda Sat-sanga Society, which later became Self-Realization Fellowship outside of India. In a note at the end of the book, the author states: “The information contained in this whole chapter has been checked by Swami Yogananda in person.” He quotes liberally from early issues of East-West magazines, later renamed Self-Realization, and The Science of Religion. Other chapters cover Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and the Vedanta Centers. The author attended one of the swami’s lectures at the Union Methodist Episcopal Church’s auditorium in New York City. Swami Yogananda “surely had his audience with him–at least its audible members. Clearly they felt in him a source of truth and comfort, inspiration and stimulation. They nodded assent to his pronouncements and laughed at this jokes.” Beacon Press (Boston) also published New Pilgrimages of the Spirit, which is the proceedings of the Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston where Swami Yogananda gave his first speech, “The Science of Religion,” in America. Wendell Thomas also mentions it in Hinduism Invades America.