Our Books
Grace Period: A Memoir in Pieces
How do you build a life after failed dreams and missed opportunities? Buddha-killer Kelly J. Baker finished her PhD in religion and imagined that she would end up in the tenure-track job for which she trained. She had done everything right: written a provocative and well-researched book,…
By The Way: Dispatches, Devotions, and Deliriums from the Camino de Santiago
A moving, funny and fascinating account of a religion scholar’s 5-week pilgrimage down the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. Is the journey is more important than the destination? Are some pilgrimages more “authentic” than others? Can agnostics have as deep a spiritual experience as…
Oh God Oh God Oh God: Essays on Sex and Religion
Religion and sex, sex and religion — what happens when you put them together? In this case, you get 19 engaging essays on topics like: Sex ed in Catholic school! Soft-core Buddhism! Taoist foreplay! The neurotic erotics of Evangelicals! Shiksappeal! Scoping in church! Killing the…
You Were Strangers: Dispatches from Exile
You Were Strangers: Dispatches from Exile is a beautiful collection of essays by Ashley Makar that reads as one finely woven story. It is a story of exile, her own from her family roots in Egypt and Alabama, and that of young Sudanese refugees in Israel….
Cancer Doesn’t Give A Shit About Your Stupid Attitude: Reflections on Cancer and Catholicism
According to writer and illustrator Mary Valle, the pink platitudes about breast cancer are lies. Cancer is a disease, not a test of strength or a blessing in disguise. And as Valle was irradiated, biopsied and operated upon, she began to feel less like a…
Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith
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…
Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible
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…