Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda

Unlike our other books on Swami Vivekananda, this one was written by an historian at Oxford University, and published by Harvard University Press. It is both a biography and history of Swami Vivekananda. She discovered Vivekananda while reading Life of Vivekananda by Roman Rolland. She was shocked to discover in her research that while Vivekananda is well-known in India, he's hardly known in the West.

The author writes well and approaches Vivekananda with respect and admiration, but shouldn't be called a devotee. It's good to read outside books for a deeper and different view of Swami Vivekananda. In the preface, she concludes,
"it has been a rare honor - and the most invigorating intellectual experience of my life - to have written a book that I hope will engage people's emotions, intellect, and political sensibilities. All I can say is that I have striven to bring some balance to our historical understanding of Global Vedanta and the extraordinary people who engaged in a rare, difficult and sometimes confusing attempt to build bridges across cultural divides."

Click on the link to watch below a talk she gave about her book at the Vedanta Society of New York.

Here's another link that takes you a Smithsonian Magazine review of the book.