Considering the diverse heritage of the pilgrimage site of Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka, Alexander McKinley develops a new account of pluralism based in political ecology, representing the full array of actors and issues on the mountain.

Alexander McKinley studies the religious traditions of Sri Lanka, especially their connections and transformations across past and present. He received a PhD in religion and modernity from Duke University and teaches at Lake Forest College and Loyola University Chicago.

Vijaya Nagarajan, author of Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual, and Ecology in India—An Exploration of the Kolam:
Mountain at a Center of the World folds Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka into a kaleidoscope of swirling perspectives, from history, from literature, and from the mountain itself. McKinley displays a fascinating and utterly brilliant ability to dance quite effortlessly between various different scholarly fields and weave together multiple threads of questions, interlacing mythological stories with their functionality in various religious and cultural contexts. I am truly bowled over by the author’s efforts.

Charles Hallisey, Harvard Divinity School:
Drawing on close textual and ethnographic studies as well as on the insights afforded by friendships with ‘worker-pilgrims’ on the mountain, McKinley deftly locates the Peak in a variety of local, global, and planetary histories. Making the Peak the theoretical anchor of his reflections, McKinley invites us to learn how to listen to the mountain itself and especially the ethical demands that it makes on us.

Anne M. Blackburn, author of Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200–1550:
This original and creative work deserves reading and rereading. Readers will find in McKinley’s book important unfamiliar accounts of Sri Lanka’s plural religious histories as well as an introduction to a rich corpus of multilingual literary materials addressing the power of the Peak and its environment. The valuable translations will be of use to teachers and researchers. Encompassing all of this is an innovative approach to ethical reasoning about Sri Lankan natural and social spaces as McKinley invites us to 'abide by Sri Lanka' in new ways.