Steven J. Rosen

Steven J. Rosen, also known as Satyaraja Dasa (born 1955), is an American author. He is the founding editor of The Journal of Vaishnava Studies and an associate editor of Back to Godhead, the magazine of the Hare Krishna Movement. He authored more than 20 books on Vaishnavism and related subjects. including Black Lotus: The Spiritual Journey of an Urban Mystic (2007), which is the life story of Bhakti Tirtha Swami.

Steven J. Rosen has a strong view on vegetarianism and has written Diet for Transcendence: Vegetarianism and the World Religions (1997, previously published as Food for the Spirit) and Holy Cow: The Hare Krishna Contribution to Vegetarianism and Animal Rights (2004). In the former volume, he systematically explains the practice of vegetarianism in various religious traditions, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, with special attention to the philosophical schools of India. In the latter, citing the devotee-scholar Bhaktivinoda Thakur (1838–1914) and the Hindu savant Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927–2001), he looks at early Vedic tradition, animal sacrifices, and the innovative contributions of the Hare Krishna movement.

Several years ago he was called upon by Greenwood Press, a major academic publisher, to write the Hinduism volume for their Introduction to the World's Major Religions series. Greenwood later commissioned him to write Essential Hinduism, a more comprehensive treatment of the same subject, under the auspices of their parent company (Praeger). Graham Schweig, for example, considers Essential Hinduism significant for its "analysis of Vishnu in the four original Vedas" and writes that the book reveals "perhaps for the first time in a readable, accessible volume, why Vishnu’s place is important in Hinduism as a whole, as connects Vaishnavism with the early Vedic tradition."

In his 2008 book/CD package called The Yoga of Kirtan: Conversations on the Sacred Art of Chanting, Rosen interviews 21 kirtan masters from around the world and offers new essays on call-and-response singing as a form of yogic spirituality. His books have appeared in several languages, including Spanish, German, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Chinese, and Russian.