Head and Heart

February 25, 2008
Wills offers his insights into the ties between the history of the United States and Christianity, beginning with the founding fathers all the way to the current regime. The story is enlightening and a fascinating glimpse into a relatively unexamined past. However, Mel Foster's reading is wholly uninspired and all too familiar, offering only a straightforward narration that will surely lose most listeners with its mind-numbing approach. Foster has turned himself down a notch, reading at a sluggish pace as if the audience may not be able to follow along without extreme clarity. As thought-provoking as the material is, Foster's insipid narration makes listening a chore. A Penguin Press hardcover.

September 15, 2007
Historian and acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winner Wills (history, emeritus, Northwestern Univ.; "What Jesus Meant") provides a survey of the key movements and personalities that helped create the separation of church and state in America. Narrative histories of American Christianity are typically large owing to the diverse religious landscape, and Wills's book follows suit as he examines the patterns of evangelical activity, usually at times of social transformation, and religious tolerance for issues such as abortion rights, abolition, and civil rights. He takes us through the complete history of America's religions, from the Puritans' arrival in America to George Bush's reelection on the religious vote. And he offers short biographies of, e.g., evangelist Billy Sunday and philosopher John Locke, exploring each individual's contribution to the changing of America's religious landscape at different points in history. The reader discovers patterns of decreased religious fervor followed by an explosion of evangelical reassertion of religious values. Wills ends his examination cautioning vigilance about the aggressive reassertion of religious values into the public sphere. Academically well written and with a depth of bibliographical research, this book is recommended for larger collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/15/07.]L. Kriz, West Des Moines P.L., IA

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2007
The history of Christianity in the U.S. is a dialectic of the intellect and the emotions, Wills maintains in this big new book, which ought to be the one volume everyone interested in the subject reads--it is lucid and grandly informative--andreactsto, thus keeping the conversation alive. Although intransigently theocratic, the Puritans brought both heart (passion) and head (reason) to their religious practice, passionately persecuting dissidents unto death, reasonably fostering broad tolerance and social justice in the words and deeds of Roger Williams and repentant witch-trial judge and abolitionist pioneer Samuel Sewall. Eighteenth-century Quakers merged head and heart to spread antislavery sentiment. The deist Founding Fathers observed the head-heart conflicts and with the First Amendment opted the new federal government out of them by forbidding a national church. That disestablishment has been a godsend because, ever since, head and heart have seesawed in influence.Although the Puritans and disestablishment occupy the best pages in the book, Wills traversal of nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments is full of what will be not only revelations to most Americans but also, they may decide, things they really ought to know. If it is disappointing that Wills ends in contention, arguing that the Bush II administration poses the greatest threat ever to disestablishment, it is also true that his case for seeing abortion as a nonreligious issue is ascogentas it is refreshing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)