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.

Yoga classes and Zen meditation, New-Age retreats and nature mysticism-all are part of an ongoing religious experimentation that has surprisingly deep roots in American history. Tracing out the country's Transcendentalist and cosmopolitan religious impulses over the last two centuries, Restless Souls explores America's abiding romance with spirituality as religion's better half. Now in its second edition, including a new preface, Leigh Eric Schmidt's fascinating book provides a rich account of how this open-road spirituality developed in American culture in the first place as well as a sweeping survey of the liberal religious movements that touted it and ensured its continued vitality.