Drawing on her 16 months of fieldwork among two rural districts of Buryats, in Mongolia and China, Swancutt (social anthropology, U. of Oxford) presents an extended case study from Bayandun showing that innovation in magical remedies is a common Muryat strategy for addressing crisis situations. She discusses Mongolian fortune and the anthropology of magic; Buryat cosmology and the timescales of religious practice; fortune, the soul, and spiraling returns; curses khel am, and the omnipresence of witchcraft; divination and the inextensive distance to cursing rivals; and an unconventional timescale: the immediate rise of fortune. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)