This is an engaging and fascinating study, remarkably ranging in its purview—at times breathtakingly so. Written jointly by three professors (of religion, anthropology, and Chinese history) and a psychoanalyst, it sustains an impressive and somewhat surprising thesis. Ritual, they argue, easily disavowed or distrusted in modern times, is endemic to the very way human beings address life and extend into the world, because even as ritual consists of insistent repetitions, it maintains continuities and ventilates possibilities. Performative rather than discursive, involving action