America's Book

"Noll covers the contentious place the Bible had in shaping ""a Bible civilization""...(i)f there was an issue of religious and public debate during the nineteenth century, the Bible was part of it, and Noll covers it. * John M. Mulder, a former president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and a historian of American Christianity, The Presbyterian Outlook * America's Book stands as a monumental scholarly achievement, but it is also valuable for lay readers. All future scholars who study this subject will cite and rely upon America's Book, and they will come to depend on its survey and synthesis of the primary sources, and for filling in and identifying important gaps in the existing scholarly literature. * Yisroel Ben-Porat, Ph.D. candidate in early American history at CUNY Graduate Center, Tradition Online * America's Book documents the extent of the Bible's reach -- from the printing and distribution of Bibles and the creation of Sunday schools to the intellectual dead ends into which unwise handlers of the Bible were led. The book's breadth is a tribute to Mr. Noll's career as an interpreter of Protestantism in North America * D.G. Hart, The Wall Street Journal * No one knows more about the Bible in American public life than Mark Noll. In this landmark volume, he shows how the Protestant dream of a Bible civilization collapsed in the exegetical impasse over slavery. He also brings his subtle insight and unflinching honesty to bear on other plot lines, producing an epic history worthy of Scripture itself. Everyone interested in American religion must reckon with this book. * Peter J. Thuesen, author of Tornado God: American Religion and Violent Weather * Mark Noll's America's Book recounts the public role of the Bible in the United States from the beginning of the republic through the early twentieth century. Noll tells a complex and fascinating story with measured judgments and penetrating insights. Filled with fascinating details, this book is a work of both original research and impressive synthesis. Noll is attuned to ironies and silences but is also deeply respectful of the human struggle with both the scriptures and the culture. Reviewers may run out of superlatives. * George C. Rable, author of God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War * Noll tells a story of extraordinary breadth and complexity both briskly and clearly. He consistently embeds the Bible's role in American life in the cultural conditions that made it possible. Noll's erudition is like old money: always present but tastefully held in the background. The book will provoke a host of responses, both popular and academic, but it is hard to imagine that any will rival, let alone surpass, the sheer brilliance of his achievement. * Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Christian History, Duke Divinity School * America's Book shines as the magnum opus of arguably the most eminent historian of American Christianity during the past century. This magisterial volume is the authoritative study of how the Bible and American national history shaped each other. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and masterfully written, it belongs on every serious reader's bookshelf. * Candy Gunther Brown, author of The Word in the World: Evangelical Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789-1880 * In a breathtaking scholarly work, Mark Noll explores the doomed experiment of a republic built on an unwritten law of sola scriptura. * Brad East, The Christian Century *"