In the land of temples: Notes from a South Indian pilgrimage

The land of temples is South India, the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. It's been called the last surviving classical civilization, a land where there is room for temples large and small and time for rituals passed down for millennia. In four brief essays and two dozen evocative black-and-white photographs scholar and devotee Michael Steinberg takes readers into the inner sanctuaries of ancient temples and out again into the teeming streets of contemporary Chennai. A big book in a little package, his deeply personal story also sheds light on the enduring importance of a way of life that has its roots in the dawn of civilization itself.

About the author: Michael Steinberg is an independent scholar and writer living in Rochester, New York, where he works as a lawyer. He is the author of The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning, and the Culture of Capitalism (Monthly Review Press, 2005) and A New Biology of Religion: Spiritual Practice and the Life of the Body (Praeger, forthcoming), and his young readers' history of the Adirondacks, Our Wilderness, was named best individual cultural contribution to the Adirondack Park Centennial celebration. Steinberg has taught at the University of Rochester and published essays on the philosophy of German Idealism. He is also an initiate at the Sri Rajarajeswari Peetham in Rush, New York, and blogs occasionally on religion, science, and social issues at http://open.salon.com/blog/mlstein. He and his wife, the photographer Loret Steinberg, are under the close supervision of two medium-haired cats.