Manseau - One nation, under gods: a new American history

Lively, refreshing. The image of a city upon a hill evokes a founding idea of America: an exceptional nation of pilgrims contending with the wilderness, united in their faith. One Nation, Under Gods dispels that tidy image. With tales of secret faiths, false tolerance, and quiet yet formidable dissent, each chapter is a window onto lives that were lived on the margin of Christian narratives.

Damaris Colhoun, New York Times Book Review

Riveting. With a novelists verve and a historians precision, Manseau deftly guides us through a cacophonous religious landscape, studded with encounters so unexpected and bizarre that they could be the stuff of speculative fiction. One Nation, Under Gods is crammed with enthralling tales of dissenters and outliers reinventing religious traditions to make sense of their often desperate circumstances. Much more than a simple catalog of diversity, One Nation, Under Gods is a stunning history of religious cross-pollination.

Tanya Erzen, Bookforum

Here at last is the rest of the American story, in one great kaleidoscope of a book. Peter Manseau has revealed the many too often obscured by one nation. The truth is so much more vast and strange and funny and fascinating than that, and Manseau, a brilliant writer of great wit, curiosity, and learning, is the perfect guide.

Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family

Truth telling and riveting storytelling dont always go hand in hand, but they do in this necessary history of Americas stunningly diverse religious heritage.

Cathleen Medwick, More

An unusual work of history. Fascinating. Most key points in our national narrative involve a non-Christian element if you look closely, Manseau maintains. Each chapter tells the story of a person considered a heretic, blasphemer, atheist, or heathen, who nevertheless helped in some way to shape the course of American history.

Laura Miller, Salon

The United States is arguably the most religiously diverse nation in the world. Peter Manseau shows how this has always been the case. One Nation, Under Gods is a refreshing, compelling, and surprising reexamination of our nations history that puts lie to the oft-quoted idea that America was founded as a Christian nation.

Reza Aslan, author of No god but God and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Accessible and insightful. A richer, more complex, and compelling viewpoint that is reminiscent of Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United States. This significant and timely work is important for those who wish to understand the complete and diverse landscape of religious history in Americabut even more valuable for those who dont.

Erin Entrada Kelly, Library Journal

Manseau artfully packs each profile with context, adding the occasional soupon of drama to ensure maximal, enthralling readability.

Booklist

One Nation, Under Gods is one of those too-rare works of innovative history that also manage to be works of literary art. Its series of interlocking stories, rich in color and depth, combine to offer a new picture of America, both past and present.

Adam Goodheart, author of 1861

What the author endeavors to do hereand does so with deep-running stories told with verve and dashis to square that narrative with a religious syncretism that provides a more colorful, distinct, eccentric, not to mention truthful, historical record. An eye-opener. After reading Manseau, readers will see the influences he writes about not only dot, but shape, the landscape.

Kirkus Reviews

Manseaus writing is lively. He finds a place for the religiously disaffected, for atheists like William Livingston, and for the seriously addled hucksters who sponsored cosmic awareness and Be-Ins in the sixties. One is not surprised to find the attitude of the deist Thomas Jefferson recommended in the books epigraph: It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. An entire chapter is devoted to Jeffersons gift of his library to the nation in 1814 and the congressional battles it generateda foretaste of present-day culture wars.

Luke Timothy Johnson, Commonweal

Subversive and much-needed. A tour de force. A thorough reimagining of our nations religions. Engagingly written, with a historians eye for detail and a novelists sense of character and timing, this history from another perspective reexamines familiar tales and introduces fascinating counternarratives.

Publishers Weekly

Brilliant.

Ed Simon, Tikkun

A beautifully written account of our interfaith country.

Eboo Patel, Sojourners

One Nation, Under Gods is a tour de force, definitely in the must-read category. Dissecting five hundred years of history, Manseau presents scholarly research as compelling storytelling that presents a controversial view: the notion that the United States was founded as a Christian nation is a myth.

Najwa Margaret Saad, Arab Weekly