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God the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time
Hardcover
Business of WritingReligion General 20th Century United States History
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ISBN13: 9780062464040
Publisher: HarperOne
Published: Mar 14 2023
Pages: 384
Weight: 1.16
Height: 1.26 Width: 6.34 Depth: 9.23
Language: English
New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed religion scholar, Stephen Prothero, captures the compelling and unique saga of twentieth-century America on an identity quest through the eyes and books of one of the most influential editors of the day--a search, born of two world wars, for resolution of our divided identity as a Christian nation and a nation of religions.
One summer evening in 1916 in Blanchester, Ohio, a sixteen-year-old farm boy was riding his horse past the town cemetery. The horse reared back and whinnied, and Eugene Exman saw God. For the rest of his life, he struggled to recreate that moment. Through a treasure of personal letters and papers, God, the Bestseller explores Exman's personal quest. A journey that would lead him in the late 1920s to the Harper religious books department, which he turned during the Great Depression into a money-making juggernaut and the country's top religion publisher.
Exman's role in the shaping of American religion is undeniable. Here was a man who was ahead of his time and leading the rest of the nation through books on a spiritual exploration. Exman published bestsellers by the controversial preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, the Catholic radical Dorothy Day, the Civil Rights pioneer Howard Thurman, and two Nobel laureates: Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King Jr. Exman did not just sit at a desk and read. In addition to his lifelong relationships with the most influential leaders of the day, Exman was on a spiritual journey of his own traversing the world in search of God. He founded a club of mystics, dropped acid in 1958, four years before Timothy Leary. And six years before The Beatles went to India, he found a guru there in 1962.
In the end, this is the story of the popularization of the religion of experience--a cultural story of modern America on a quest of its own. Exman helped to reimagine and remake American religion, turning the United States into a place where denominational boundaries are blurred, diversity is valued, and the only creed is that individual spiritual experience is the essence of religion.
This meticulously researched work uncovers the hidden story of the man who shaped how America seeks God:
- A Definitive Biography: Follow Eugene Exman from a graveyard epiphany in rural Ohio to the heights of New York publishing, revealing the man behind a spiritual revolution.
- American Religious History: Discover Exman's personal relationships with Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Aldous Huxley, and Albert Schweitzer, and how he helped shape their iconic books.
- The Birth of Seeker Spirituality: Chronicle how Exman's club of mystics and radical personal quests--including experiments with psychedelics--helped shift American faith from the pews to a personal search for meaning.
- The Untold Story of AA: Uncover the surprising role Exman and Harper & Brothers played in the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous and its foundational text, the Big Book.
2 different editions
Also available
God the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time
Prothero, Stephen
Paperback
God the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time
Prothero, Stephen
Audio Book
Also from
Prothero, Stephen
God the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time
Prothero, Stephen
Paperback
God the Bestseller: How One Editor Transformed American Religion a Book at a Time
Prothero, Stephen
Audio Book
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