Frances FitzGerald is the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and a prize from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the author of The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America; Fire in the Lake: the Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam; America Revised: History School Books in the Twentieth Century; Cities on a Hill: A Journey through Contemporary American Cultures; Way Out in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War; and Vietnam: Spirits of the Earth. She has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Rolling Stone, and Esquire.
* FINALIST *
* NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS *
* NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD *
* LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE *
* J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE *
“A page turner: FitzGerald is a great writer capable of keeping a
sprawling narrative on point . . . Anyone curious about the state
of conservative American Protestantism will have a trusted guide in
this Bancroft and Pulitzer Prize winner . . . We have long
needed a fair-minded overview of this vitally important religious
sensibility, and FitzGerald has now provided it.”
*The New York Times Book Review*
“A well-written, thought-provoking and deeply researched history
that is impressive for its scope and level of detail.”
*The Wall Street Journal*
“The waves of conservative Protestant influence that have
swept American life at various points in history have often seemed
to come out of nowhere. The emergence of
the Christian right's political influence in the 1970s,
for example, just as experts said religion was losing its
place in U.S. culture, was shocking. But in her new major work on
the subject, The Evangelicals, historian Frances FitzGerald
shows how the origins of these booms are discernible from afar. Her
book makes the case so well, it leaves readers with the feeling
that we should all be paying closer attention.”
*TIME*
“An epic history of white American evangelical Protestantism from
Plymouth Rock to Trump Tower . . . Fitzgerald, who won a Pulitzer
Prize in 1973 for “Fire in the Lake,’’ an account of the Vietnam
War, gracefully swoops over the decades of populist evangelicalism
with Barbara Tuchman-like grace. This is a comprehensive, heavily
footnoted, yet readable study of how the evangelical tradition has
become seared into the fabric of American life and the key figures
who made it happen. . . . Fitzgerald, always judicious and
unbiased, nobly succeeds in analyzing the nuanced differences
between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, Calvinism and
postmillennialism, charismatics and Pentecostals.”
*The Boston Globe*
“[A] capacious history of Evangelical American Protestantism. This
rich narrative ranges across the various Evangelical denominations
while illuminating the doctrines—especially personal conversion as
spiritual rebirth, and adherence to the Bible as ultimate
truth—that unite them. . . . A complex and fascinating
epic.”
*Booklist, starred review*
“FitzGerald’s brilliant book could not have been more timely, more
well-researched, more well-written, or more necessary.”
*The American Scholar*
“Frances FitzGerald answers the recurrent question, “Where did
these people [mainly right-wing zealots] come from?” She says
there is no mystery involved. They were always here. We were just
not looking at them. What repeatedly makes us look again is what
she is here to tell us.”
*The New York Review of Books*
“An excellent work that is certain to be a standard text for
understanding contemporary evangelicalism and the American impulse
to reform its society.”
*Library Journal*
"Timely and enlightening"
*The Economist*
“Without a doubt the best book on the history and present status of
American evangelicals. . . . ambitious, engaging, and nuanced.”
*Harvey G. Cox, Jr., Hollis Professor of Divinity Emeritus, Harvard
Divinity School*
“This is the book I’ve been waiting for. Now we have in one volume
the richly textured, often puzzling, and always engaging story of
American evangelicalism from colonial days to the present. To
understand evangelicalism’s impact on our country, this is must
reading.”
*Robert Wuthnow, Professor of Sociology and Director of Princeton
University’s Center for the Study of Religion*
“Another superb work by renowned but long-absent political
journalist FitzGerald . . . this one centering on the roiling
conflict among American brands of Christianity. . . . Overflowing
with historical anecdote and contemporary reportage and essential
to interpreting the current political and cultural landscape.”
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
“FitzGerald has crafted nothing less than a spiritual history of
the nation whose truest believers have for four centuries
constituted themselves a moral majority. This is an American story,
objectively told and written from the inside out”
*Richard Norton Smith, author of On His Own Terms: A Life of Nelson
Rockefeller*
“A compelling narrative history of “the white evangelical movements
necessary to understand the Christian right and its evangelical
opponents.” . . . [FitzGerald] skillfully introduces readers to the
terminology, key debates, watershed events, and personalities that
have populated the history of white American evangelical Protestant
culture in the last half-century. She explains issues such as
fundamentalism, biblical inerrancy, Christian nationalism, civil
religion and anticommunism, the charismatic movement, and abortion,
and introduces such diverse figures as Karl Barth, Jerry Falwell,
Reinhold Niebuhr, and Pat Robertson . . . a timely and accessible
contribution to the rapidly growing body of literature on
Christianity in modern America.”
*Publishers Weekly*
“This is an important book. FitzGerald has written a monumental
history of how evangelicalism has shaped America. Few
movements in our long story have had as significant an influence on
American life and culture as conservative Christianity, and
FitzGerald does full justice to the subject's scope and
complexity.”
*Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Destiny and Power
and Thomas Jefferson*
“A rare and valuable book. It’s admirable that Frances FitzGerald
is able to tell the story of the American evangelical movement
without judgment or bias—but it’s absolutely astonishing that she’s
able to tell it with such authority, clarity, and complete grasp of
the historical context.”
*Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of
Prohibition*
“The Evangelicals is a comprehensive history of white
evangelical movements in the United States, geared to provide a
deeper understanding of present-day evangelicals and their
influence. Journalist and historian Frances FitzGerald presents
nearly 300 years of complex ideologies, schisms, social reforms and
energetically creative theology in a well-organized, eye-opening
narrative. . . . This book is not only for those with a
particular interest in religious history; it is for anyone with a
serious interest in American social movements, politics and
culture. It is a history that strongly re-emphasizes the evolution
of a nation, and those who hope to shape the future are wise to
study the past.”
*Shelf Awareness*
"The Evangelicals explodes any notion of evangelicalism as a
monolithic movement. FitzGerald also deftly captures the 'exotic
cast' of this pure product of America..."
*San Francisco Chronicle*
"A masterful narrative."
*Gospel Coalition*
"Essential reading on the conjoined nature of religion and politics
today."
*Barnes & Noble (BN.com)*
“Massively learned and electrifying . . . the long, contradictory,
and compelling history of American Evangelicals and the world they
made. In the telling of this story, FitzGerald pulls off an
admirable feat. She writes compassionately about generations of
deeply held faith without seeming naive, even as she resists
cynicism while noting the psychotics, charlatans, and con artists
who have sometimes arisen to "deceive the very elect." The result
is a quiet marvel of a book, well deserving of winning its author
her second Pulitzer . . . magisterial . . . FitzGerald is
adroit and gentle in noting how often America’s religious right
wing seems to have been fighting rearguard actions.”
*The Christian Science Monitor*
“This incisive history of white evangelical movements in America
argues that their influence has been more pervasive and diverse
than generally realized.”
*The New Yorker*
"A formidable achievement that could become one of the definitive
works on the subject."
*Vox*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |