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442 J O U R NA L O F R E L I G I O U S H I S TO RY

than compelling to read, and is a great posthumous testimony to her scholarly excel-
lence. I recommend it unreservedly.
CAROLE M. CUSACK
University of Sydney

DANIEL PALS: Nine Theories of Religion. 3rd ed., New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015 [1996]; pp. ix + 374.
This book is an updated version of what is by now a staple reference on reading lists of
undergraduate and postgraduate introductory courses on methodology in the study of
religion, and the emergence and development of the academic study of religion as a
discipline. Pals first published Seven Theories of Religion in 1996, and it was reissued
as Eight Theories of Religion in 2005. What has rendered the book so durable is that Pals
writes clearly and competently about theorists that are often quite difficult to read for
contemporary students, and he relates particular thinkers thematically, showing how an
interest in animism and magic (the focus of Chapter 1) plays out rather differently in the
works of Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) to how it does in the works of James
George Frazer (1854–1941). The ninth chapter in this edition is devoted to American
pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James, which enriches Pals’ previ-
ously limited palette regarding psychology of religion, provided by the chapter on
Freud. The remainder of the scholars discussed in Nine Theories of Religion are all
major figures, and their contribution to the discipline is unquestionable.
They are: the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920); the economic philoso-
pher Karl Marx (1818–1883); the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1857–1917); the
Romanian historian of religion Mircea Eliade (1907–1986); the ethnographer and social
anthropologist of African peoples Edward Evans Evans-Pritchard (1902–1973); and
finally, the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006). This collection of
eminent worthies is respectable, but it is worth noting that much has happened in the
methodological study of religion since the death of Eliade in 1986, almost thirty years
ago, and Pals’ book has a slightly antiquated feel. It is depressing to find no women
worthy of inclusion. Yet this was also true of Michael Stausberg’s edited collection,
Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion (2009), in which fifteen
chapters, bookended by an introduction and conclusion by Stausberg, mined a range of
newer frameworks, all traceable to men, and including cognitivist, material-oriented,
rational choice, anthropomorphist, and ritualist theories, among others. Some of these
models had their roots in the classic theorists covered by Pals, demonstrating their
enduring value to Religious Studies. In conclusion, this book will be of value to teachers
of undergraduate introductory courses, and students attempting to get across studying
religion in social scientific and non-confessional ways.
CAROLE M. CUSACK
University of Sydney

BRIAN R. CLACK: Love, Drugs, Art, Religion: The Pains and Consolations of Existence.
Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014; pp. xiii + 191. Illust.
Brian R. Clack’s Love, Drugs, Art, Religion is an entertaining work that takes as its
departure point William Paley’s assumption of “existential felicity . . . the world is
good, life is a blessing, and the conditions for happiness are built into the very fabric of

© 2015 Religious History Association