The two-volume encyclopedia of Hinduism by Benjamin Walker is, according to reviewer Whitall Perry, a “manageable survey of this phenomenon [Hinduism] in a manner at once accessible and convincing to any serious lay reader in need of an erudite reference manual that is something less than a library.” Perry notes several ‘inevitable’ areas that do not receive the detail one would hope for, and criticizes Walker for his dismissal of the caste system and discounting of the Bhagavadgitâ. He notes however, that to reject the book on this basis would be a waste; “it seems, alas, that it often takes one kind of person to document spirituality and another to understand it.”