Swami Vivekananda: The Journey of a Spiritual Entrepreneur details the events of Vivekananda's life, encompassing his transformation from a nameless wanderer to the most renowned representative of Hinduism of all times. In this book, we come across the Vivekananda who not only created history by delivering the Chicago Lecture in 1893 but also established the Ramakrishna Order through an unparalleled entrepreneurial spirit which brought to the fore his qualities as a decisive leader and an excellent communicator who reached out globally to convey the message of the Vedanta. These attributes of Vivekananda's personality have remained largely unexplored in most of the books written on him.

This book also maps Hinduism and its present-day challenges vis-à-vis its attributes in light of Swami Vivekananda's philosophy and brings forth its contemporary relevance in a practical manner for the reader at a time when the fire of fundamentalism among different faiths has turned religions of the world essentially into separating factors within humanity. Further, it also contains detailed descriptions of practical approaches to translation that will help scholars build a comprehensive framework for translation of complex texts such as the Vedas and Upanishads. It finally concludes with the Indian media's articulate advocacy of Vivekananda's approach on a number of platforms in recent times, to unite humanity despite all its diversity as it is ever more relevant today.

Rakesh Tripathi is a Vivekananda scholar with a keen interest in Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature. He has an MA and MPhil in English (Linguistics and Phonetics) and has completed his doctoral studies in English on Swami Vivekananda's speeches. His research interests are discourse analysis, anthropological linguistics and English language teaching. He specialises in systemic functional linguistics and has extensively worked in this area.

Professor Tripathi started his career as a general linguistics lecturer at the Lucknow Christian PG College and later on moved to Odisha where he acquired a rich experience of teaching courses on language and literature with a focus on practical skill development, using innovative teaching techniques. In 2009, Dr Tripathi was invited to ISFC 2009 at Beijing for a discussion on the historical Chicago lecture of Swami Vivekananda. He is a life member of the Systemic-Functional Linguistics Association and the Linguistic Society of India.

Besides teaching, Dr Tripathi leads the Department of English and Foreign Languages at Sri Sri University, Cuttack, and is the editor of SSU Insight, the quarterly newsletter of the university with a global readership. He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar.