Madame Blavatsky's Baboon

Peter Washington's history of Theosophy and the spiritual movements that grew around and out of it, covering figures such as Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater, Rudolf Steiner, G. I. Gurdjieff and Jiddu Krishnamurti. He traces the spread of these ideas in the West from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Critical and often satirical in tone, it is nevertheless well researched and an engaging overview of the period.