Despite several decades of scholarship on African diasporic religion, Voodoo remains underexamined, and the few books published on the topic contain inaccuracies and outmoded arguments.

In Voodoo: An African American Religion, Jeffrey E. Anderson presents a much-needed modern account of the faith as it existed in the Mississippi River valley from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century, when, he argues, it ceased to thrive as a living tradition. 

Anderson provides a solid scholarly foundation for future work by systematising the extant information on a religion that has long captured the popular imagination as it has simultaneously engendered fear and ridicule.