Mircea Eliade was a Romanian scholar who helped develop the modern, secular academic discipline of religious study. His book The Sacred and The Profane is by far one of the most interesting and interestingly-written works that I have read in a while. It is impossibly confusing, but there's something really pleasurable in trying to tease out the meaning of its meandering, anecdotal text. He also happens to be one of those old school stylish guys that any young pseudo-intellectual would want to grown to be / look like.
