The American Bible

How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation

By: Stephen Prothero

Narrated by: Andrew Eiden

The New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy and God Is Not One presents a provocative crash course in the great “American scriptures”—those texts that have both divided and defined our understanding of what it is to be American. Stephen Prothero, a go-to expert on religion and media for none other than Stephen Colbert, gives readers an exciting and user-friendly introduction to American cultural history in The American Bible. Highlighting the touchstones of our collective cultural legacy, from the Bill of Rights to the Gettysburg Address, from Moby Dick to The Catcher in the Rye, from “Yankee Doodle” to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and beyond, Prothero’s stirring and provocative handbook peels back the curtain on the inner workings of what makes America tick.

A nice collection of important American works

This was one of those instances that anyone who buys audio books has had from time to time where the book didn't turn out to be anything like what I expected. I thought the book was going to be about how America's religious beliefs came to be what they are today. In actuality, the phrase "American Bible" refers to a collection of the famous works (speeches, books, judicial rulings, articles of government, etc) that make up the American canon so to speak. This isn't a typical non-fiction work. Prothero has come up with a number of the important works in American history and they are reproduced in the book either in their entirety or through excerpts. Prothero gives a brief introduction to each work and why it is important, and following the reading of that work, he includes a number of references that have been made concerning that work over the years. It took a while for me to get into it but after a while I started to find it enjoyable and interesting. I thought Prothero's device of using a book from the bible to categorize each group of writings was very clever, although at times there didn't seem to be an obvious reason why he listed a certain work under a particular bible book. The narrator is blah.