A God-Shaped Nation - by Brook Wilensky-Lanford (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A kaleidoscopic history that shows how the quest to worship freely became one of the nation's most vexing tensions, shaping life for believers and nonbelievers alike

It seemed providential: a vast, bountiful continent appeared to Europeans just as religious turmoil was reaching a fever pitch in their own. Spanish Catholics, British Protestants and French Jesuits all set their hopes on this "new world." Yet it was a land already settled by indigenous people with their own religious life. Soon it teemed not just with rival Christian sects but with immigrants and enslaved people who brought a global array of beliefs with them. It didn't take long for Americans to begin spinning out faiths all their own: Mormonism, Christian Science, Spiritualism, and the apocalyptic Millerism that had followers waiting in vain for Jesus's return on a rainy October night in 1844.

In A God-Shaped Nation, Brook Wilensky-Lanford reveals how religion in all its manifestations has been at the heart of the nation's deepest divides and its moments of transcendent unity. The history she unfurls is not bound by the walls of temples, synagogues, mosques, and churches. There is Anne Hutchinson, preaching in her parlor in defiance of colonial Puritan clergy; Reform rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise shocking his kosher guests at an 1883 banquet by serving soft-shell crab; Wovoka, the Paiute man from whose prophecy emerges the Ghost Dance movement; and the Chinese immigrants whose pantheon of Daoist gods offered protection over their backbreaking work constructing the transcontinental railroad.

Following both the leaders of religious movements and the everyday people who brought them alive, Wilensky-Lanford shows that no area of American life--not even the most secular--has been untouched by the push-and-pull of religious freedom.

Review Quotes

Praise for Paradise Lust:

"Paradise Lust is a pleasure. Wilensky-Lanford tackles her subject with an appealing mix of serious research and tongue-in-cheek humor. Neither too academic nor too whimsical, the storytelling in Paradise Lust is often irresistible."--Andrea Wulf, The New York Times Book Review

"Absorbing . . . In writing Paradise Lust, Ms. Wilensky-Lanford faced the unenviable task of translating intellectual history into popular history, and her approach relies heavily on speed and whimsy. . . . But her interest in her subject is deep, her narrative is expertly layered, and her interpretations of the seekers' motives are more than convincing."--Jennie Erin Smith, The Wall Street Journal

"A gloriously researched, pluckily written historical and anecdotal assay of humankind's age-old quixotic quest for the exact location of the Biblical garden."--Elle

"One of the most enduring and mysterious places in the Bible, the Garden of Eden has fascinated people around the world since ancient times. Those who believe that it is a real place are . . . a diverse and prominent group of personalities that Brook Wilensky-Lanford describes in her lively new book. . . . The desire to put Eden on the map is a timeless quest to discover our origins, all told in charming detail."--The Daily Beast, a "Daily Beast Must Read"

"Witty and exhaustively researched."--Carl Hartman, The Associated Press

"Wilensky-Lanford approaches her subjects with respect, enthusiasm and conscientious research, and succeeds in doing what the best one-subject historical studies do, which is to reframe history, freshening up long-familiar events."--Liz Coville, San Francisco Chronicle

"Each sojourn Eden-ward is . . . a personal journey into the mirage where unattainable desires and reality meet."--Caroline O'Donovan, The New Republic

About the Author

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is a religion writer, editor, and teacher. The author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and former managing editor of Killing the Buddha, her work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Currently the Associate Director of Sacred Writes Public Scholarship, she holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University and a PhD in Religion in the Americas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she lives.