The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel OlcottDenounced by the New York Times as an unmitigated rascal while simultaneously being lauded as a reincarnation of Gautama Buddha himself, Henry Steel Olcott (1832 1907) was friend to Madame Blavatsky, co founder of the Theosophical Society, and an indefatigable reformer and culture broker between East and West. Olcott helped bring about a new spiritual creation, Protestant Buddhism, a creative creolization of American Protestantism, traditional