god for the godless
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god for the godless |
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Vanity Fair: “Shot through with epiphanies and controversy.” New York Newsday: "Daring and delightful... Heretics and skeptics, as well as true-blue believers, will find Killing the Buddha refreshing, inspiring and downright invigorating." - Lauren Winner, "A Church of One's Own" New York Observer: "A genuine stab at a saucy kind of spirituality that's as bold as it is refreshing." - Daniel Asa Rose, "An Orgy of Skeptical Ecstasy" Denver Post: "A heartfelt meditation on and exploration of contemporary religious practice in the United States, an intriguing work that is unafraid of controversy." - "Rewriting the Bible: A Heretic's Handbook" Buffalo News: "One of the most eccentric and fascinating books of the year... You're unlikely to have encountered anything before quite like it." - Editor's Choice Featured on NPR's "To the Best of Our Knowledge"; WBUR-Boston's "On Point"; WNYC's "Leonard Lopate Show"; WBEZ-Chicago's "Eight-Forty-Eight"; WBUR-Boston's "Here & Now"; WYPR-Baltimore's "Marc Steiner Show"; KGNU-Boulder's "Live from Penny Lane"; WSUI-Iowa's "Live from Prairie Lights"; KGNU-Boulder's "Book Talk"; "The Joey Reynolds Show"; and Voice of America. “Like a Michelin guide to the American
soul, Killing the Buddha is written by a prophecy dream team.” “A
profoud, peculiar, and fascinating collection.” "A mesmerizing platform for all the confusions, inconsistencies and hard boiled epiphanies concerning spiritual belief in 21 st century America.... No matter what side of the God question you land on, Killing the Buddha will have you throwing that old adage 'Don't talk religion with friends' to the lions." - Christopher Bollen, Time Out New York "A compendium of gritty God-is-everywhere narratives illuminating religion's impervious grip on even the most steadfast non-believers among us." - Boston Weekly Dig " If Killing the Buddha holds blasphemy, it is... engaging stuff." - Ottowa Citizen "A cross between William Least Heat-Moon and a page of Talmud... Lives up to the promise of honest struggle." -- Detroit Jewish News
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - STARRED and BOXED REVIEW The setup goes like this: take two religiously flippant intellectuals (in this case, Manseau and Sharlet, the founding editors of the spiritually hip online magazine Killing the Buddha) and send them on a yearlong road trip to discover the underbelly of America's religious culture. Make sure they mingle with the most wild and weird of holy rollers -- a philosophical stripper working out of a converted Baptist church in Nashville, a one-eyed rodeo preacher from the "Cowboy Church" of Texas, a clan of blood-thirsty Jesus freaks in Florida, and a cross-dressing terrorist from North Carolina, badly in need of an exorcism. Take all these "true" stories, turn them into the "Bible's Book of Psalms" and alternate them with 13 freshly imagined "books" of the Bible, written by iconic American writers such as Rick Moody, Peter Trachtenberg and Haven Kimmel -- and, voila, a heretic's Bible is born. Each of the 13 contributors was offered "a solo, a single book of the Bible to be remade, revealed, replaced, inverted, perverted, or born again, however the spirit so led them." The writers came up with seven nonfiction books (e.g. in Exodus Francine Prose draws upon her childhood to explain why she can no longer stomach seders) and six books of pure fiction. "Like the original, this Bible crosses freely between genres, between history and prophecy, confession and myth," according to Manseau and Sharlet. As disjointed and freakish as this biblical sequel sounds, the editors manage to pull off a most impressive work. This is some of the most original and insightful spiritual writing to come out of America since Jack Kerouac first hit the road. (Jan. 13) Forecast: Be on the lookout for the authors' Bible-thumping, tent revival book tour in January and February. Stops are planned for 28 cities coast to coast, and will feature the two authors (who are experienced performers) and, in some cities, headlining writers such as Prose, Moody and Kimmel. Read an interview with Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau. Killing the Buddha -- Recommended and Shortlisted: The Boston Globe, Village Voice, Chicago Reader, Washington, D.C. City Paper, Austin Chronicle, Boulder Daily Camera, Philadelphia Independent, Willamette Week (Portland, OR), Portland Mercury, Albuquerque Alibi, Charlottesville (VA) Hook KILLING THE BUDDHA: A Heretic's Bible Peter Manseau
and Jeff Sharlet. Order Now! |
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