Provides a clear and comprehensive introduction ideal for students approaching World Religions for the first time. The newly revised textbook introduces the reader to the world's religions in historical context, illustrating the complex dynamic of each religion over time, while also presenting current beliefs, practices and group formations. Written by experts in the field this book is an engaging introduction that covers all of the important topics required and covered on World Religions courses. It has been updated to include a new chapter on religion and violence. With pedagogical features such as four-colour images, further reading, chapter overviews, chapter summaries and a glossary this is an ideal introductory textbook.

Robert Ellwood's text offers an engaging, comprehensive, and clearly written overview of the major issues and positions in the study of mysticism. "I am very impressed with this second edition of Mysticism and Re- ligion. It is lucidly written, thorough, thoughtful, and filled with nu- merous vivid, first person accounts. Ellwood is well grounded in the current scholarly debates on mysticism, and his intellectual so- phistication and even-handed assessment of differing perspectives are readily apparent throughout the text." -G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University "Ellwood's text is excellent and his methodology is sound; his illus- trations from both past and contemporary mysticism make his work simultaneously challenging and pleasant to read." -Edward Hughes, California State University at Long Beach

The year 1950 saw the height of the postwar religious boom in America and also the depths of the Cold War. It was a year when religious enthusiasm and postwar affluence coexisted with anxiety about global communism and an ever-present nuclear threat. McCarthyism, the advent of the hydrogen bomb, and the onset of the Korean War provoked ardent and diverse responses from religious leaders and occasioned lively debate in flourishing religious journalism.

Robert Ellwood's "1950" is a cultural time capsule, recovering the impetus for many of today's trends, remembering endings and beginnings, and documenting many other developments in American religious life of fifty years ago. It highlights the parallels and divergences between religious culture then and now.