One nation, under gods : a new American history /
Peter Manseau.
- First edition.
- New York : Little, Brown and Company, (c)2015.
- 469 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Introduction: Unearthing history -- A meeting of the gods -- An American jihad -- Strange opinions in the City on a Hill -- Blasphemy -- Witches and Indians -- Call-and-response -- Longhouse nation -- Awakenings -- The Yiddish code -- Twenty gods or none -- O people of America! -- Krishna's sisters -- A tale of two prophets -- "The heathen Chinee" -- "Go ahead, keep your whiskers" -- War prayers -- The immortality racket -- City on a Hill, revisited.
Thomas Jefferson collected books on all religions and required that the brand new Library of Congress take his books, since Americans needed to consider the "twenty gods or no god" he famously noted were revered by his neighbors. Looking at the Americans who believed in these gods, Manseau fills in America's story of itself, from the persecuted "witches" at Salem and who they really were, to the persecuted Buddhists in WWII California, from spirituality and cults in the '60s to the recent presidential election where both candidates were for the first time non-traditional Christians.