Larissa Vilenskaya and Joan Steffy have done a great service in assembling and presenting so much information on firewalking-not the least, Larissa's own experiences as a firewalking instructor in America. There is much to learn in these pages about the human potential for transformation and about the often mysterious interactions of mind and body.

Sternfield has written a balanced, honest account of a little understood phenomenon. It is a highly readable source for the firewalking initiate, the prospective firewalker or the curious student and observer. It is NOT a Believer's tract (nor a Skeptic's tract). Nevertheless, it has been acclaimed by leading firewalk instructors as the best book around on the subject.

This book describes two forms of firewalking and religious healing: first, the Anastenaria, a northern Greek ritual in which people who are possessed by Saint Constantine dance dramatically over red-hot coals, and, second, American firewalking, one of the more spectacular activities of New Age psychology. Loring Danforth not only analyzes these rituals in light of the most recent work in medical and symbolic anthropology but also describes in detail the lives of individual firewalkers, involving the reader personally in their experiences: he views ritual therapy as a process of transformation and empowerment through which people are metaphorically moved from a state of illness to a state of health.