Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal ReturnThis founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian emigre scholar Mircea Eliade (1907 86). Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures & drawing on scholarship published in no less than half a dozen European languages, Eliade's "The Myth of the Eternal Return makes both intelligible & compelling the religious expressions & activities of a wide variety of