I'm a journalist and a historian who writes about how American evangelicals are complicated. I was trying to explain Left Behind in graduate school and I talked and talked about the theology in the book—all about the doctrines of the rapture, the antichrist, and the millennium. Then my professor said, “But it’s fiction, right? Why is it fiction? What are people doing when they read a novel instead, of say, a theological treatise?” I had no idea. But it seemed like a good question. That was the spark of Reading Evangelicals. But first, I had to read everything I could find about how readers read and what happens when they do.
I wrote...
Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith
The history of American evangelicalism told through five mega-bestselling novels, the people who sold them, and the readers who had mixed feelings.
There is so much Christian fiction and it is read by so many people—millions and millions. What my book proposes is…maybe that’s important? In the history of bestselling evangelical fiction, we can see the hopes, fears, and imagination of American evangelicals. We can see the core question that evangelicals ask themselves and the conversation that grows out of the diverse and sometimes contradictory answers. And then, by paying attention to how and where those books are sold, we can understand how the “imagined community” is held together.
Denning is a master. He mixes literary analysis, historical sleuthing, and some smart ideological excavation to see how dime novels—treated like trash by most scholars—were used by working men and women in 19th century America. They were creating a culture and their reading did all the things that culture does: helped them make sense of the world, gave them a place to pay with ideas, and invent myths and narratives for orientation. All while middle-class scolds told them they were reading “wrong.”
If you’ve ever loved a book that wasn’t good for you, or wanted to seriously think about something that wasn’t “serious,” this book is for you.
Mechanic Accents is a widely acclaimed study of American popular fiction and working-class culture. Combining Marxist literary theory with American labor history, Michael Denning explores what happened when, in the nineteenth century, working people began to read cheap novels and the ""fiction question"" became a class question. In a new afterword, Denning locates his study within the context of current debates on class and cultural studies.
The most common kind of book club in America is a Bible study. And while lots and lots of people have opinions about how you should read the Bible, or who is doing it wrong, no one delves into how real readers read the sacred text like James Bielo.
An ethnographer who is interested in American religion, Bielo is a careful and kind observer, who does everything he can to understand what people are doing when they read the Bible together. He takes you with him and you’ll see the world differently because he did.
Evangelical Bible study groups are the most prolific type of small group in American society, with more than 30 million Protestants gathering every week for this distinct purpose, meeting in homes, churches, coffee shops, restaurants, and other public and private venues across the country. What happens in these groups? How do they help shape the contours of American Evangelical life? While more public forms of political activism have captured popular and scholarly imaginations, it is in group Bible study that Evangelicals reflect on the details of their faith. Here they become self-conscious religious subjects, sharing the intimate details of life,…
If there is anything that snobs hate more than popular literature, it’s popular literature that’s popular with women. Especially young women, middle-aged women, and older women.
Radway really revolutionized the historic study of readers with this book. It has some weaknesses, but there are many many more things that it gets right, starting with the premise that you shouldn’t just assume why people read. But ask them.
Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention ""must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading."" She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and…
Wolfgang Iser isn’t for the faint of heart. You don’t read him as much as wrestle. But in this work, the German theorist teaches you to watch for the ghost of the reader who haunts fiction, the one who isn’t quite there, but always right next to you, implied by the text as the intended audience, the ideal reader (who isn’t quite you).
He’s German and this is literary theory, so put away your phone, but if you can wrestle with Iser it will change forever how you read anything.
Like no other art form, the novel confronts its readers with circumstances arising from their own environment of social and historical norms and stimulates them to assess and criticize their surroundings. By analyzing major works of English fiction ranging from Bunyan, Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray to Joyce and Beckett, renowned critic Wolfgang Iser here provides a framework for a theory of such literary effects and aesthetic responses. Iser's focus is on the theme of discovery, whereby the reader is given the chance to recognize the deficiencies of his own existence and the suggested solutions to counterbalance them. The content and…
I’m cheating a little here, but I made the rules and there’s a little clause in the rules I made that says I can break them as long as I announce that I am breaking them. Herewith, I announce.
This isn’t a book about readers. It’s a book about watchers—specifically the Dutch audience for the soap opera Dallas. But this book is so good and so wild, it changed forever the way I think about “reception,” including reading. I recommend this book all the time and if you want to understand the freedom and creativity of readers, you have to read it.
Dallas, one of the great internationally-screened soap operas, offers us first and foremost entertainment. But what is it about Dallas that makes that entertainment so successful, and how exactly is its entertainment constructed?
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of citations and interviews with more than 250 key protagonists, experts, and witnesses.
So far, the book is the main -- and only -- antidote to a slew of early partisan “Benghazi” polemics, and the first to put the attack in its longer term historical, political, and social context. If you want to understand some of the events that have shaped present-day America, from political polarization and the election of Donald Trump, to January 6, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russian expansionism, and the current Israel-Hamas war, I argue, you need to understand some of the twists and turns of America's most infamous "non-scandal, scandal.”
I was in Benghazi well before, during, and after the attack as a US diplomat and co-director of a medical NGO. I have written three books, and have been a contributor to The NYT, Foreign Affairs, Forbes, Salon, The Financial Times, Newsweek, and others.
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
