Books by Ronald Knapp

A COMMON MAN, AN UNCOMMON LIFE. Most memoirs, it seems, are written by the rich or the famous. The author of Moments can make no claim to either. He simply sees himself as a common man for whom life has been an uncommon adventure. He grew up in a working class family where a high school education had been the highest attainment and went on to earn two master's degrees. He became a minister when he was nineteen years old and continued in the ministry for six decades. Over those years he has given several thousand sermons and presided at hundreds of weddings, funerals, and memorial services. Over the course of his ministry, furthermore, he progressed from Christianity to agnosticism. He also married at nineteen and has been married to the same woman for sixty years. Together they raised five children, lived in thirteen different homes, been residents of seven different states. In addition, the author has been fortunate in that he has been able to travel to some interesting and exotic places around the globe. All of this might suggest that he has some interesting stories, which he refers to as "moments" to share with the world.

Walt Whitman and His new bible! "No one will get at my verses," Walt Whitman wrote, "who insists upon viewing them as a literary performance." He may well be the premier literary figure in American history, and "Leaves of Grass" may be the single most important work in American poetry, but Whitman did not see himself primarily as a literary figure. First and foremost the poet saw himself as a prophet articulating an appropriate religion for his time. He was, he said, "inaugurating a new religion." He was attempting to write a new bible! Whitman had profound respect for the founders of the great world religions, but felt they spoke to a world long past and not to the modern world. There are many books on Walt Whitman as a poet, but "Of Life Immense" may very well represent the most comprehensive attempt ever to take Whitman seriously and to describe in outline form the major themes of his "new bible," to deal systematically with the major doctrines of his "new religion."