Books
Over the years, KtB has served as midwife to a whole library of real-world, mashed-up-pulp, no-batteries-required, ol’-fashioned books. They are our testaments to eternity. If you enjoy the site, you’ll love these.
KtB Books
Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith (July 2009)
edited by Jeff Sharlet, Peter Manseau, and the editors of Killing the Buddha
An engaging collection of ambivalent confessions, skeptical testimonies, and personal revelations of religion lost and found and lost again. Published by Beacon Press in 2009, Believer, Beware features the best from the first incarnation of Killing the Buddha, sharing true tales from the editors, Stephen Prothero, Mark Dery and Bia Lowe among many others who are striving to understand their relationship with the divine. “Shocking, exhilarating, and never dull…. Highly recommended,” according to Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly described it as “smart, candid, and insightful… The voices are refreshingly honest.”
Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible
by Peter Manseau and Jeff Sharlet
An entirely original book that delivers the spiritual state of the nation in 13 dispatches that range from a prophet in pasties in Geneva, Illinois to a church caught in the ashes of Ground Zero. Interspersed are 13 versions of biblical scripture, recast by our favorite Buddha-killing writers, including Rick Moody, Francine Prose, Haven Kimmel, A.L. Kennedy, and many more. Vanity Fair described it as “shot through with epiphanies and controversy” and The New York Observer called it “whip-smart… a genuine stab at a saucy kind of spirituality that’s as bold as it is refreshing.” This is the book that Publishers Weekly called “the most original and insightful spiritual writing to come out of America since Jack Kerouac first hit the road.”
KtB Pamphlets
The Living Cain
by Lydia Conklin
With hilarious pictures and bedtime-style storytelling, Lydia Conklin recounts how she came to dream of someday finding the perfect dog, who she imagined would be named Cain. He would be all she’d always wanted and answer all that was missing in her life. As she takes home foster dog after foster dog in search of him—with one disaster after another along the way—Lydia finds something better than any living Cain could ever be.
KtB Editors
Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between
by Jeff Sharlet
No one explores the borderlands of belief and skepticism quite like Jeff Sharlet. He is ingenious, farsighted, and able to excavate the worlds of others, even the flakiest and most fanatical, with uncanny sympathy. Here, he reports back from the far reaches of belief, whether in the clear mountain air of “Sweet Fuck All, Colorado” or in a midnight congregation of urban anarchists celebrating a victory over police.
From Dr. Cornel West to legendary banjo player Dock Boggs, from the youth evangelist Ron Luce to America’s largest “Mind, Body, Spirit Expo,” Sharlet profiles religious radicals, realists, and escapists. Including extended journeys published here for the first time, Sweet Heaven When I Die offers a portrait of our spiritual landscape that calls to mind Joan Didion’s classic Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy
by Jeff Sharlet
The secretive Christian fundamentalist group known as “The Family” is leading a new crusade for a “God-led government.” Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from within the organization, garnering intense media coverage when it was revealed that their townhouse on Washington DC’s C Street was central to three Republican politicians’ sex scandals in the summer of 2009. In C Street, Sharlet shows how The Family, steeped in the influence and corruption one usually associates with the notorious lobbying industry, fuels and funds political fundamentalism from within our government. His exclusive access to sources and explosive documents show the true implications of fundamentalism in American politics—now, leading up to the next election, and beyond.
Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Relics
By Peter Manseau
“The dead may tell no tales, but the relics they leave behind do, if only we will listen to what they have to say. Happily, one of America’s best young writers has his ear to the ground at reliquaries from San Francisco to Sri Lanka. The result is an intriguing tour of the world’s most holy hairs, hearts, and hands that refuses to lapse into the sort of confessional cant that deadens much writing on religion today. Rag and Bone is alive with both humorous and heartbreaking observations about the chicanery and mystery of things seen and unseen.” –Stephen Prothero, Professor of Religion at Boston University and author of the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy
More books from Peter Manseau.
The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
by Jeff Sharlet
This New York Times bestseller is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet’s discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. Barbara Ehrenreich says: “One of the most compelling and brilliantly researched exposes you’ll ever read—just don’t read it alone at night!” Listen to Jeff discuss The Family with NPR’s Diane Rehm. Read “Jesus Plus Nothing,” the story that led to the book, in Harper’s.
Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter
by Peter Manseau
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for fiction and the Sophie Brody Award for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature, Manseau’s first novel has been called “a living, breathing… terrific book,” by Kirkus Reviews; “rich, ironic, darkly picaresque,” by Publishers Weekly; and a “thrilling tale of secrets and revelations… reminiscent of Isaac Bashevis Singer,” in a Booklist starred review. Junot Diaz says: “An extraordinary novel… one of literature’s most stunning achievements.” Listen to Peter discuss Songs with NPR’s Scott Simon. Read an excerpt from the novel here on Killing the Buddha. More books from Peter Manseau.
The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011
edited by Lavinia Spalding
Featuring the KtB essay “A Hundred Unspoken Rules,” by editor Meera Subramanian, this adventurous collection contains Meera’s South Asian bumblings and ruminations, as well as true stories about having lunch with a mobster in Japan, learning the secrets of flamenco in Spain, delivering a trophy for best testicles in a small town in rural Serbia, and discovering the joy of getting naked in South Korea, among others.
Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes
by Laurel Snyder
By turns tragic and funny, religious and heartbreaking, angry and surprisingly familiar, Half/Life represents the altogether diverse memories and reflections of a handful of Half-Jews, including Thisbe Nissen, Katharine Weber, Jennifer Traig, Jeff Sharlet and Joyce Maynard. More books by Laurel Snyder
The Myth of the Simple Machines
By Laurel Snyder
“The gorgeous simplicity of Laurel Snyder’s language makes all the possibilities—and the impossibility—of living stand out starkly. … A startling and touching book.” – Cole Swensen, author of Ours and The Glass Age. More books by Laurel Snyder
Contributors and Friends
What Happened to Anna K.
By Irina Reyn
“Irina Reyn’s sly wit and perfect-pitch dialogue make this modern-day retelling of Anna Karenina a delight to read. Reyn is a cunning writer who knows her subject —Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York City—inside out, and casts a skeptical glance at their habits, aspirations, and thwarted destinies. Readers should love this novel, whether or not they know the original Anna.” – Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Ruined by Reading and Leaving Brooklyn. Read Irina Reyn on Killing the Buddha: “I Was a Pre-Pubescent Messiah.”
My Faith So Far: A Story of Conversion and Confusion
By Patton Dodd
“Patton Dodd’s memoir is the most honest account of the constant conversions, backslides, and rebirths of a life of faith that I have read in years. In its acknowledgment that the intellect, too, can be a path to salvation, My Faith So Far brings to mind the classics of spiritual memoir genre, perhaps especially The Seven Storey Mountain. In fact, if the evangelical world is in need of its own Merton, a young writer willing to keep his wit sharp while searching for both sustenance and relevance in his faith, Dodd might be the man for the job.” – Peter Manseau. Read part of the story on Killing the Buddha: “I Am a Sea.”
Splendored Thing: Love, Roses, and Other Thorny Pleasures
By Bia Lowe
From “Apples,” a Killing the Buddha excerpt: ” Remember the first, there in the dappled light: the bauble, hung like an ornament on the bough. Doesn’t it dazzle, all green with its tarnished navel? You draw your hand up through the leaves, grab the fruit without trepidation, with surety, firmness. It is the object of your desire, the aim of your id, treasure for the grasping. Mine is a Pippin, plucked from a grizzled branch in the orchard. Its skin is tough and my teeth slide around on its surface before I can latch into it. The skin finally cracks, and my teeth shovel the flesh. The flavors are both sour and tannin. My mouth is one part juice, the other dry cotton. I enter its world.”