Prologue: 1848: great expectations
Part I: The development hypothesis: 1848-1871
The new Prometheus: socialists and spiritualists in the age of the machine
The stones of Venice: Ruskin and Thoreau against the juggernaut
The French revelation : Baudelaire, Lévi, and the romantic occult
The descent of man: Darwin, Gobineau, and the meaning of life
The new chronology: Whitman, Huxley, and the war for the soul
The origin of the world: Wagner, Jesus, and the racial spirit
Part II: The new age: 1871-1898
Passage to India: Madame Blavatsky's empire of theosophy
The revolt of Zarathustra: Nietzshe in Urania
The eternal return: Colonel Olcott and the modern Buddha
The will to power: Afghani's Islamic science and other conspiracies
Culture and anarchy: the new age education of Mohandas Gandhi
The perspectivists: Vivekananda and Herzl among the Aryans
Epilogue: 1898: the psychopathology of everyday life.