Daemons Are Forever

David Gordon White's new book, Daemons are Forever: Contacts and Exchangesin the Eurasian Pandemonium, is one of the most significant monographs in the academic study of religion in recent years. With impressive geographical and temporal scopes-ranging from East and South Asia all the way to Northern and Western Europe, and from reconstructed prehistorical protomyths to contemporary ethnography-the book impressively attempts to narrate the long story of vital religious contacts and exchanges across Eurasia. . . . Daemons are Forever charts a path for future insights into Eurasia's interconnected histories. * Reading Religion * This is an excellent resource for advanced or graduate students and researchers, and it could serve as a reference covering the myriad stories, creatures, and Indo-European features included. . . . Daemons are Forever is both capstone and cornerstone, a summation of a professional scholarly career and the laying of a foundation for the continuing work of a professor emeritus. * Journal of the American Academy of Religion * Not only does White address an immense geographic space with stupefying erudition, but he examines an equally vast historical time period, using texts from High Antiquity to contemporary ethnography. . . . This work reveals the immense erudition and intellectual virtuosity of the author, an admirable expert not only of the religions of the Indian sub-continent, but also of a wide array of Euro-asian religious traditions. * Archives de sciences sociales des religions (Translated from French) * White is unique in combining the characters of an old-fashioned, obsessively knowledgeable linguist, an Eliadean (or even Frazerian) comparatist, and a cutting-edge theorist with a particular penchant for the dark, the bent, and the anarchic in human religious life. This book makes full use of all his talents, presenting a broad view, constantly enlivened with astonishing details, of the too-long-misunderstood role of the demonic in the history of religions. * Wendy Doniger, University of Chicago * A revelatory book that brims with erudition and ambition, making connections that span thousands of miles and cross not only centuries but millennia. White has written a book that issues a series of challenges to how we should look at South Asia and worlds far beyond. * Peter Frankopan, Worcester College *