Book excerpt: Bringing together fourteen papers, this book gives new depth to our understanding of the aims and achievements of Swami Vivekananda. It invites us to relate him to movements and individuals outside his native Bengal; it shows how modernizing trends in Indian society wrestled with traditional features of Hinduism such as caste; and it links his religious and social ideals to thinkers and theologians in the West. The book firmly distances Swami Vivekananda from chauvinist or communal misinterpretations of his work.