Books by Leigh Eric Schmidt

What happened when the ear tuned to God's voice found itself under the inspection of Enlightenment critics? This book takes us into the ensuing debate about "hearing things"-an intense, entertaining, even spectacular exchange over the auditory immediacy of popular Christian piety.

Offers a reassessment of the 'consumer rites' that social critics have decried. This book discusses how holiday celebrations were almost banished by Puritans and religious reformers but went on to be romanticized and reinvented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It offers a cultural history of the commercialization of American holidays.