Comments on: Book review: Mitch Horowitz. Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation. New York: Bantam Books, 2009.

By: Clark

Clark — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:58:38 +0000

To add, I half suspect that the answer to my question is that the “next step” requires strong interdisciplinary work. i.e. someone with a strong background in empirical psychology, in economics, in technical sociology or even philosophy and history of philosophy to draw out the more significant strands.

By: Clark

Clark — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:56:53 +0000

I think the focus on esotericism (I don’t think mysticism captures the range of phenomena) since Quinn’s groundbreaking work is great. It’s amazing to see how much this has taken hold in general American history. (i.e. no Mormons involved)

That said most of the works I’ve read suffer from the fuzzy problem you noted. It’s often not clear what they are discussing nor what patterns they are seeing. Put an other way, I agree that broadly speaking esotericism had a huge effect on the American development. What historians need to do now is move beyond vague parallelitus and start making more precise and specific claims and generate some theoretical models.

Why that more theoretical scaffolding hasn’t been developed is quite surprising to me. Instead we get the same sort of writing merely transported to new people or periods.

By: larryco_

larryco_ — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:25:11 +0000

Thanks for the review. I just put a hold on a copy at the county library.

By: Jared T

Jared T — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:36:02 +0000

Enjoyable, as always, Matt. I just hope one of my more dry forthcoming-in-JMH reviews won’t appear alongside yours

By: matt b.

matt b. — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:42:51 +0000

Thanks, Ben. Frankly. the Schmidt always seemed to me – with a couple of exceptions, like most of chapter 2 – something of a toss-off from an exceptional scholar, on par with, say, Garry Wills’ Certain Trumpets. Like Gertrude Stein used to say, “There’s no _there_ there.” The Albanese book is more impressive to me. The arguments of both, however, have more follow-through than does Horowitz. He states a thesis, for which, props to him, but it’s a relatively self-evident one. Both of these other authors build on it – except they published before him. Oops.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:15:56 +0000

Excellent work, Matt; thanks for sharing it here. You are, by far, the king of esoteric scholarship in these realms.

How does this book’s thesis compare to Schmidt’s Restless Souls or Albanese’s Republic of Mind and Spirit?