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The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America
Viking Adult
May 2010
On Sale: April 29, 2010
416 pages
ISBN: 067002175X
EAN: 9780670021758
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
The amazing story of how yoga came to America-and the
charming rogue who made it possible In Jazz Age New York, there was no place hotter than the
Clarkstown Country Club, where celebrities such as Leopold
Stokowski mingled with Vanderbilts, Goodriches, and Great
War spies. They came for the club's circuses and burlesques
but especially for the lectures on the subject at the heart
of the club's mission: yoga. Their guru was the notorious
Pierre Bernard, who trained with an Indian master and
instructed his wealthy followers in the asanas and the
modern yogic lifestyle. Robert Love traces this American obsession from moonlit
Tantric rituals in San Francisco to its arrival in New York,
where Bernard's teachings were adopted by Wall Streeters and
Gilded Age heiresses, who then bankrolled a luxurious ashram
on the Hudson River-the first in the nation. Though today's
practitioners know little of Bernard, they can thank his
salesman's persistence for sustaining our interest in yoga
despite generations of naysayers. In this surprising, sometimes comic story, Love uncovers the
forgotten life and times of the colorful, enigmatic
character who brought us hatha yoga. The Great Oom delves
into the murky intersection of mysticism, money, and
celebrity that gave rise to the creation of one of America's
most popular practices and a five billion-dollar industry.
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