For the first time: The true story of how yoga came to America - and the charming rogue who made it possible.

From the gas lit parlors of the Gilded Age to the opulent excesses of the Roaring Twenties, hatha yoga couldn't have followed a more bizarre and sinuous path than it did in the hands of a young Iowan born as Perry Baker. Re-creating himself as Dr. Pierre Bernard, he rescued a discipline banned in Victorian India, packaged it for Americans, and taught legions of followers the yoga we know and practice today.

Reviving a forgotten tale of mysticism, intrigue, and the American dream, The Great Oom traces the practice of yoga from Bernard's moonlit "Tantrik" rituals in 1890s San Francisco to it's arrival in New York City, where his teachings were adopted by the Wall Street barons and Gilded Age heiresses who would bankroll his luxurious Jazz Age ashram on the Hudson River - the first in the nation.