Columbia Guide to Religion in American History Book Cover

Paul Harvey

As you longtime blog readers know, we are very slow and reluctant to engage in any form of self-promotion here at RiAH, but every once in a blue moon will give in to the temptation to feature a book, out or forthcoming, from one of our contributors, or heck, even myself and a contributor.

Last year we celebrated the completion of the manuscript for the Columbia Guide to Religion in American History, and now it's into production and we have the launch of the book cover. This is going to be one of those very expensive reference works that are meant for libraries, so I hope some of you can alert your librarians at the appropriate time. Of course, if you feel like shelling out $75 or whatever it is for the book, go right ahead, but if you don't, I'll understand. Just make your univ. library do so.

Also, quite a few contributors to and longtime readers of this blog wrote pieces for this book (Lin Fisher, for example, opens the volume with a great piece on "Colonial Encounters," and Jane Smith of Harvard Divinity School, whom I interviewed previously on the blog, closes the main portion of the book with an essay on Islam in America), and I'm especially proud of a very lengthy and substantive introduction that Ed Blum and I produced for the volume, which features an exploration of ten major paradoxes of American religious history. The book also features some excellent bibliographic work produced by co-blogmeister Randall Stephens, including a filmography, discography, and list of electronic resources, as well as an extensive A-Z glossary of Am. religious history.