The divine supermarket: Travels in search of the soul of America - Hardcover

Malise Ruthven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701131519 ISBN 13: 9780701131517

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 1989

Synopsis

This is an exploration of the influence of far-right preachers on the Reagan administration. In its analysis of the melting-pot of religious cults in America, the book covers high-mindedness and moral angst, sexual humbuggery and corruption. As the world's oldest secular state, America has proved uniquely adept at hatching new creeds and producing variations on more familiar themes from Latter-Day Saints to snake-handlers. Its citizens enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world and the country is undergoing a major religious revival. Fundamentalist groups in the South challenge the teaching of evolution in schools, television preachers such as Jerry Falwell are undermining the liberal reforms of postwar years, and cults such as the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh flourish. Part travel book, part history, part cultural analysis, this book follows Malise Ruthven from Puritan New England to the Reaganite right wing areas of the sun belt and middle America in what is intended to be a study of the soul of modern America. Malise Ruthven is also author of "Islam in the Modern World".

About this title

About the Author

Malise Ruthven is a writer and historian of the Islamic world, with a focus on religious fundamentalism. He has been a scriptwriter with the BBC Arabic and World Services, and has taught Islamic Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Aberdeen, the University of California, and at Dartmouth. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, among other publications, and is the author of several other books, including Fury for God and Fundamentalism.

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL FRAS, is a British travel writer and novelist. In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Review

Ruthven is a civilized man, sharp-witted and clever, with an impressive mastery of American social and cultural history and he has written a brilliant account of his travels in search of our spiritual byways and backwaters. -- Los Angeles Times

A perfect and crazy concept . . . It's a rocking good read and something of a pocket guide to hell. --Time Out

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0701131519
• ISBN 13: 9780701131517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224