America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911
Mark A. Noll
Dec 2022 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Tom Parks
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37 hr 7 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
America's Book shows how the Bible decisively shaped American national history even as that history influenced the use of Scripture. It explores the rise of a strongly Protestant Bible civilization in the early United States that was then fractured by debates over slavery, contested by growing numbers of non-Protestant Americans, and torn apart by the Civil War. This first comprehensive history of the Bible in America explains why Tom Paine's anti-biblical tract The Age of Reason (1794) precipitated such dramatic effects, how innovations in printing by the American Bible Society created the nation's publishing industry, why Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831 and the bitter election of 1844 marked turning points in the nation's engagement with Scripture, and why Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were so eager to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. Noll's magisterial work highlights not only the centrality of the Bible for the nation's most influential religious figures, but also why it was important for presidents like Abraham Lincoln; notable American women like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frances Willard; campaigners for civil rights like Frederick Douglass and Francis Grimke; lesser-known figures like Black authors Maria Stewart and Harriet Jacobs; and others.
About the author
Mark A. Noll is professor of history emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. His recent publications include In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783; America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln; and, as coeditor, Protestantism after 500 Years.
Since recording his first book for the Kansas Audio Reader Network in 1985, Tom Parks has enjoyed giving voice to stories. He has been nominated for Audie Awards and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards, and reviewers have described his performances as "conversational," "energetic," and "sincere."
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