In this fascinating work of religious criticism (2006 edition, with a new Afterword by the author), Harold Bloom examines a number of American-born faiths: Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, Christian Science, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Southern Baptism and Fundamentalism, and African American spirituality. He traces the distinctive features of American religion while asking provocative questions about the role religion plays in American culture and in each American’s concept of his or her relationship to God. Bloom finds that our spiritual beliefs provide an exact portrait of our national character.
“Brilliantly successful…. Bloom exposes, as scarcely anyone has before, an eccentricity at our spiritual center.”—The Washington Post
“A novel analysis of the American soul … insightful and pungent.”—The New York Times
“A remarkable diagram of the religious imagination…. An exegesis of the religions themselves, concentrating on those sects whose origins are particularly rooted in American history and American patterns of thought…. A great bolt of originality: Bloom manages to wade into a hopelessly over-explored territory and point out precisely those landmarks that everyone else has missed. Remarkable ideas remarkably set forth.”—Kirkus Reviews
“This is the most important book on American religion in a long time…. An enormous help to anyone who would understand our contemporary spiritual condition.”—Robert N. Bellah, New Oxford Review
“An amazing book: dazzling in its insights, provocative in its thesis, and often very, very funny in its observations. Not since D. H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature have I read a work on American civilization so penetrating and so exciting.”—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal
“An evocative, provocative and memorable account.”—Martin E. Marty, The Christian Century
“A rigorous, eccentric yet absorbing effort to isolate what makes American religion American.”—Kenneth L. Woodward, Newsweek
A Publishers Weekly Religious Bestseller
Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, is the author of more than thirty books, including The Anxiety of Influence, The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human, and How to Read and Why. His many honors include a MacArthur Award, the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the International Prize of Catalonia, the Alfonso Reyes Award of Mexico, and the Hans Christian Andersen Prize of Denmark.
“Brilliantly successful…. Bloom exposes, as scarcely anyone has before, an eccentricity at our spiritual center.”—The Washington Post
“A novel analysis of the American soul … insightful and pungent.”—The New York Times
“A remarkable diagram of the religious imagination…. An exegesis of the religions themselves, concentrating on those sects whose origins are particularly rooted in American history and American patterns of thought…. A great bolt of originality: Bloom manages to wade into a hopelessly over-explored territory and point out precisely those landmarks that everyone else has missed. Remarkable ideas remarkably set forth.”—Kirkus Reviews
“This is the most important book on American religion in a long time…. An enormous help to anyone who would understand our contemporary spiritual condition.”—Robert N. Bellah, New Oxford Review
“An amazing book: dazzling in its insights, provocative in its thesis, and often very, very funny in its observations. Not since D. H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature have I read a work on American civilization so penetrating and so exciting.”—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal
“An evocative, provocative and memorable account.”—Martin E. Marty, The Christian Century
“A rigorous, eccentric yet absorbing effort to isolate what makes American religion American.”—Kenneth L. Woodward, Newsweek
A Publishers Weekly Religious Bestseller
Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University, is the author of more than thirty books, including The Anxiety of Influence, The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human, and How to Read and Why. His many honors include a MacArthur Award, the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the International Prize of Catalonia, the Alfonso Reyes Award of Mexico, and the Hans Christian Andersen Prize of Denmark.
