Many versions of The Gita According to Gandhi have been published. This review compares three that I have read (cf. thumbnail image at bottom of review).As far as the Gita verses themselves are concerned, they are the same or nearly so in all three books. In other respects, the books differ substantially. Here is a brief chronology followed by a comparison.1926-27: Gandhi translated the Gita from Sanskrit to Gujarati. In 1926 he gave a nine month series of teachings to members of his ashram. Mahadev Desai and another ashram member took notes on these teachings.1929: Gandhi wrote an introduction to his translation in Gujarati, and the whole was published in Gujarati.1931: Gandhi translated his introduction into English while serving a prison term. The introduction was published in English in Young India in 1931.1933-34: Mahadev Desai, while in prison, translated Gandhi’s Gujarati version of the Gita into English. Desai also wrote a long supplementary introduction (“My Submission”), and added extensive notes of his own to the brief notes that Gandhi had interleaved with the Gita verses, in order to make the Gita more accessible to the English-speaking public.1942: Desai died before his English translation was published.1946: Gandhi explains in a Foreword how a collaborator of Desai proof-read Desai’s manuscript after his death and readied it for publication. Gandhi vouches for the accuracy of the English translation. The first edition of Desai’s posthumously published book – complete with Gandhi’s introduction and brief notes; Desai’s supplementary introduction and lengthy notes; and Gandhi’s Foreword – appeared in August 1946. I bought the fifteenth reprint, published in 2012. This version (with orange cover) is still available on Amazon.The edition with the most reviews on Amazon is a stripped-down version from Wilder Publications. This is the first edition that I purchased and read. It contains Gandhi’s Foreword, Introduction, and brief notes, but it completely omits Desai’s supplementary introduction and all of Desai's notes. Most of what Gandhi praises in the Foreword has been left out. As other reviewers here have pointed out, the Wilder Publications edition suffers from the fact that the notes are not set off from the Gita verses by line spaces, indentation, or a smaller font. To make matters worse, nowhere is it explicitly stated that all of the notes are due to Gandhi. I believe they are (i.e., none of the notes are due to Desai), but this fact should have been made clear by the publisher. The Wilder edition does not have a Glossary or Index.The Desai edition is superior in both form and content. It gives each verse in Gandhi’s Gujarati; then Desai’s English translation of Gandhi’s Gujarati; followed by Gandhi’s notes (if any) in a smaller font; followed by Desai’s notes in square brackets and a yet smaller font. You can read all of it, or easily skip the parts that don’t interest you. Desai’s supplementary introduction alone is worth the price of the book. At 120 pp., “My Submission” is a book within a book. It contains a wealth of helpful information, presented in an accessible way. Desai’s writing style reminds me somewhat of Montaigne: - by liberal use of quotes, he connects the Gita, Ghandi, and his own thoughts with the whole universe of eastern and western thought. You will find quotes from the Bible and the Koran; Buddha and Lao Tze; philosophers from Plato to Plotinus to Hume to William James; mystics like Meister Eckhart and Shankara; poets from Shakespeare to Browning to Keats. Even a few scientists are mentioned. (How many other Gita commentaries quote Max Planck?!) All in all, Desai’s contributions make for challenging and delightful reading. This edition has a good Index.The last edition reviewed here makes a wonderful companion volume and complement to Desai. It was edited by John Strohmeier and published by North Atlantic Books in 2009. Strohmeier went back to the notes that Desai and another ashram member took in real time while Gandhi was giving his nine-month-long course in 1926. These transcripts first appeared in English in "The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi" (1969). Strohmeier’s edition is based on these transcripts. In his own words:“In an effort to bring forward and clarify the essence of Gandhi’s teaching, I have abridged the commentary considerably, and rearranged it in a few sections. The original presentation of the material was unrehearsed and relatively spontaneous, and includes many of the redundancies, contradictions, ellipses, false starts, and situational digressions of everyday conversation. Some of these I have deleted after pursuing the trail of Gandhi’s thought carefully and respectfully… Others I have let stand where they illuminated important ideas, or explained the context in which he made his remarks. For example, his references to an impending flood, the killing of a snake, and the tormenting of a dog by some boys, although quite specific to ashram events, carry lessons that apply to the world beyond the ashram walls.”The comments and illustrations in Strohmeier are more spontaneous, less polished than the comments in the other books. The reader gets to be the proverbial “fly on the wall” at the ashram in 1926. This book has a combined Glossary and Index.