A review by jcovey
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by James George Frazer

3.0

For most books I consider abridgment a crime, but with this one I really wish I'd gone for a 'Selection from.' The ideas and theories Frazer expounds are compelling and rather convincing, but these theories are probably about 15% of the text. The rest is the seemingly endless evidence he gathered for these theories. His list of sources is a full third of the books length. It's an admirable amount of research, but the casual reader will not get much out of the detailed descriptions of harvest festivals from nearly every peasant population in Europe, especially because they are all so nearly alike that they almost instantly begin to blend together in the readers mind.