"Philosopher and psychologist William James championed the value of individual experience with an eloquence and zeal that places him beside Emerson and Whitman as a classic exponent of American democratic culture. Regarded by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as “a milestone in religious thought,” The Varieties of Religious Experience takes on “the very inner citadel of human life” by focusing on intensely religious individuals from different cultures and eras, in order to explore from within how religion enriches human lives." -- Library of America