Catherine Tumber is a staff editor for the Boston Phoenix. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Gnosticism and the Erosion of Public LifeChapter 2 The Moral Revolution of Metaphysics: The Rebirth of Gnosticism in Modern Times; The Public Crisis of Liberal Religion; Women and Fractured Appearances; Gnosticism and the Reform ImpulseChapter 3 New Thought and the Cosmic Sphere of Women: Emma Curtis Hopkins and Women's Alienation; Ursula Gestefeld, Therapeutic Space, and the Claims of Duty; Lilian Whiting's Muddle of Manners: Taste, Appearances, and the A-Cosmic SelfChapter 4 The Metaphysics of Nationalism: Abby Morton Diaz, the Emersonian Inheritance, and the Cult of Oneness; Edward Bellamy's Passion for the Nude in Things of Thought; The Theosophical Ensoulment of Nationalism; The Diseased and Discordant Elements of the BodyChapter 5 Cultural Experimentation in the New Age: Gnostic Syncretism and Its Dearth of Critics; The Syncretic Cultus of Greenacre: A Peaceful Thought ColonyChapter 6 Everyday Physics: Gnostic Theology and the Bohemian Manners of Mass Culture: The Stilted Esthetics of New Thought; Feminine Bohemianism; From the Higher Self to the Universal I WANTChapter 7 Conclusion: The Empowered Self and Gnostic Spiritual Flight

Here is a book that shows, in fresh detail, how what Harold Bloom has called 'the American religion' has been emptying our politics and our private lives of meaning, in favor of tired fantasies of vacuous well-being. Of course this 'new age spirituality' will not prove unique to the United States, but Catherine Tumber helps us see why it is being pioneered here, fungus like, out of our uncontrolled capitalism. Tumber's mentor, Christopher Lasch, would be proud. The rest of us can be warned.