Books like American Gospel by Jon Meacham

C.S. Lewis’s personal journal of grief following his wife’s death, offering reflective meditations on loss, faith, and the quest for meaning.

G.K. Chesterton offers a witty, insightful portrait of Saint Francis of Assisi, revealing the saint’s reasoned humility behind his legendary devotion.

Karen Armstrong traces humanity’s lifelong quest to answer profound questions through the evolving concept of God, focusing on Western monotheistic traditions, especially Christianity.

"I join the ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus but whose actions are anything but Christian." --Robin Meyers, from his "Speech Heard Round the World" Millions of Americans are outraged at the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies and even angrier that the nation's religious conservatives have touted these policies as representative of moral values. Why the Christian Right Is Wrong is a rousing manifesto that will ignite the collective conscience of all whose faith and values have been misrepresented by the Christian Right. Praise for Why the Christian Right Is Wrong: "In the pulpit, Robin Meyers is the new generation's Harry Emerson Fosdick, George Buttrick, and Martin Luther King. In these pages, you will find a stirring message for our times, from a man who believes that God's love is unive...

In his first book since What Went Wrong? Bernard Lewis examines the historical roots of the resentments that dominate the Islamic world today and that are increasingly being expressed in acts of terrorism. He looks at the theological origins of political Islam and takes us through the rise of militant Islam in Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, examining the impact of radical Wahhabi proselytizing, and Saudi oil money, on the rest of the Islamic world. The Crisis of Islam ranges widely through thirteen centuries of history, but in particular it charts the key events of the twentieth century leading up to the violent confrontations of today: the creation of the state of Israel, the Cold War, the Iranian Revolution, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, the Gulf War, and the September 11th attacks on the United States.While hostility toward the West has a long and varied history in the lands of Islam, its current concentration on America is new. So too is the cult of the suicide bomber. Brilliantly disentangling the crosscurrents of Middle Eastern history from the rhetoric of its manipulators, Bernard Lewis helps us understand the reasons for the increasingly dogmatic rejection of modernity by many in the Muslim world in favor of a return to a sacred past. Based on his George Polk Award--winning article for The New Yorker, The Crisis of Islam is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what Usama bin Ladin represents and why his murderous message resonates so widely in the Islamic world. From the Hardcover edition.

Michael Burleigh traces how European churches were pulled into 20th‑century politics, from post‑war upheaval to totalitarian regimes and the modern war on terror, revealing the interplay between faith, fear and power.