God the bestseller : how one editor transformed American religion a book at a time / Stephen Prothero.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Prothero, Stephen R., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religious literature--Publishing--United States.

Religious literature.

Exman, Eugene.

Editors--United States.

Editors.

United States--Religion.

United States.

Religious pluralism--United States.

Religious pluralism.

National characteristics, American.

Religion.

Religious literature--Publishing.

Physical Description:

xxv, 352 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2023]

Summary:

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 America's Pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick and the Religion of Experience

ch. 2 Collecting Mystics in a California Commune

ch. 3 Margueritte Bro, Strange Spirituality, and the Ethics of Publishing

ch. 4 Catholic Activism, Anti-Catholicism, and The Long Loneliness of Dorothy Day

ch. 5 African Missions, Colonialism, and The World of Albert Schweitzer

ch. 6 White Liberals and Martin Luther King Jr.'s Stride Toward Freedom

ch. 7 Bill Wilson, LSD, and the Book That Changed Everything.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Other Format:

Online version: Prothero, Stephen R. God the bestseller

ISBN:

9780062464040

0062464043

OCLC:

1355043417